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UNC - Universal Naming Convention 

Keywords: universal naming convention UNC

Question:

I've seen references to UNC in the manual. What does it mean?

Answer:

In Novell, you would type something like: 
        Dept07/SYS:Excel/excel.exe
In UNC, the Universal Naming Convention, all colons and all forward slashes become backslashes. For example: 

    \\DEPT07\SYS\Excel\excel.exe

    \\DEPT07    Server name

    SYS        Volume or share name

    Excel      Directory

    excel.exe  filename

UNC names are used to turn chaos into order, by using a single naming convention for all types of names.

Additional Notes about UNC's with Win3.1 and Win3.11:

  1. UNC support in Win 3.1 and WFW 3.11 is choppy at best.
  2. In NT and Win95, COMMAND.COM can deal with UNC (\\server\service). In WFW, command.com is still old DOS which doesn't know how to handle UNCs, it needs a drive letter. 
Article ID:   W13464

Filename:   UNC Universal Naming Convention.txt