There are other names like 'prn' and 'aux' will also not work the same since they are respectively for PRINTER and AUXILLARY devices.
The first image below shows the text before closing the Notepad file. The second image shows the text as it is displayed after the file is re-opened:
Some of the more wide-eyed conspiracy theorists postulate that this result is a form of political commentary directed against US President Bush and was knowingly and deliberately programmed into Notepad by Microsoft.
Alas, the truth is far less compelling. It appears that a lot of other character strings in the pattern 4 letters, 3 letters, 3 letters and 5 letters will give the same result. For example, the phrase "Bill fed the goats" also displays the garbled text as shown below:
In fact, even a line of text such as "hhhh hhh hhh hhhhh" will elicit the same results.
Since I first published this article, a few readers have pointed out that some character strings that fit the "4,3,3,5" pattern do not generate the error. For example, the phrase "Bush hid the truth" is displayed normally. However, conspiracy theorists should not take this as aiding their argument. "Fred led the brats", "brad ate the trees" and other strings also escape the error.
Thus, any hint of political conspiracy fades into oblivion and is replaced by a rather mundane programming bug. It seems probable that a certain combination and/or frequency of letters in the character string cause Notepad to misinterpret the encoding of the file when it is re-opened. If the file is originally saved as "Unicode" rather than "ANSI" the text displays correctly. Older versions of Notepad such as those that came with Windows 95, 98 or ME do not include Unicode support so the error does not occur.
So, nothing weird here at all...except perhaps for the fact that someone, somewhere had nothing better to do than turn a simple software glitch into another lame conspiracy theory.
What is =rand()? An Urban Myth, a Bug, or an Easter Egg?
The truth is rather boring, =rand(200,99) is a function Microsoft really did included by design. The urban myth is that =rand(200,00) is a bug with Word for Windows. A variation of this urban myth is that Microsoft programmers left an 'Easter Egg*' in the program.
Despite the prosaic truth that this is neither a bug nor an urban myth, you could baffling your friends by challenging them to type the phrase =rand(200,99) in their copy of Word for Windows 2003 or =rand.old(200,99) in Word 2007.
Background of =rand(200,99)
Word for Windows has a powerful built-in macro language. To see it in action, try highlighting text, then hold down the shift key while pressing F3 (Function key 3). Switching UPPER, lower and Proper case is an example of a more useful Word macro than =rand().
To return to =rand(200,99). The function creates one instance of 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' (different computers give different results), even if you omit any numbers inside the bracket, =rand(), moreover you can try numbers other than 200 and 99, for example =rand(2,3). Soon you will realize that the first number refers to the paragraphs, while the second number refers to the sentences. Who ever initiated this urban myth wanted to demonstrate the maximum numbers of sentences and paragraphs.
=rand() is a well known random function, which is handy for statistics, or simulating card games such as blackjack
Easter Eggs in programs are a topic in their own right. Briefly, programmers often used to leave code in programs, partly to test, but mainly because most programs are geeks and games players. Perhaps I don't know the keys to operate them, perhaps the habit really has died out, but have not seen any good Easter Eggs for about 8 years.
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