The Old New Thing

May 6, 2010 - The Old New Thing

On the Portuguese custom of the couvert, and other restaurant customs

May 6, 2010 May 6, 2010 05/6/10
Raymond Chen
In restaurants in the United States, the custom is that anything brought to the table that you didn't order is complimentary. For example, after you place your order, the waiter returns to your table with a basket of bread. The bread is provided at no extra charge. These complimentary items are usually small, like some bread or a one-bite ...

What are these strange =C: environment variables?

May 6, 2010 May 6, 2010 05/6/10
Raymond Chen
You won't see them when you execute a command, but if you write a program that manually enumerates all the environment variables and prints them out, and if you launch it from a command prompt, then you'll see weird variables with names like =C: and whose values correspond to directories on that drive. What are these things? These ...