A reserved word may refer to any of the following:
1. Often found in programming languages and macros, reserved words are terms or phrases appropriated for special use that may not be utilized in the creation of variable names. For example, "print" is a reserved word because it is a function in many languages to show text on the screen.
2. Reserved words are used in operating systems as a method of identifying a device file or other service. Below is a listing of Microsoft reserved words in MS-DOS and Windows operating systems. When attempting to use any of the below reserved words as a name of a file, or in a command you may encounter and unusual response. For example, attempting to save a file as CON or CON.txt may generate a reserved file name or access denied error or say the file already exists.
|Reserved Word||What it is|
|AUX||Auxiliary port aka Serial Port COM1|
|CON||Short for console, which Microsoft describes as the display monitor.|
|PRN||Printer aka LPT1|