As others have suggested issuing a dummy file equation, SHOULD tell you
whether or not the device is a valid device (not necessarily a printer).
This is a quick and simple parse of the users input which we find catches
most (not all) of the users mistakes. Jobs do occasionally bomb when a user
enters a valid device which isn't a printer, but we can live with that (and
then of course scorn the user :) )

However going back to the word SHOULD, there appear to be combinations of
characters which cause the check to be skipped all together.

For example any device entered as a digit followed by a character and then
followed by anything else or a device with the hash sign '#'  as anyone of
the first eight characters, are all "valid" devices. E.g:

 FILE dummy;DEV=1A

 FILE dummy;DEV=2AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 FILE dummy;DEV=3A333333333333333333333333333333333

 FILE dummy;DEV=1234567#OWENFOFNWOFINWOFWFWOFNWOF

None of the above trigger an error, although I'm pretty sure they should.
We are "still" on 4.0, so you might want to try one of these on your
version and see what happens.


Costas Anastassiades,
INTRACOM SA
Information Systems and Internal Communications Dept,
Athens Greece