Total Commander

Yes, but if I create an AUX folder this way, other programs will have troubles accessing it when not using this prefix workaround.

I believe if we treat the restrictions the same way as Cygwin does in a way that the restrictions will only function within TC ecosystem such as searching, viewing in Lister, synchronization, plugins (if possible), etc. If apps were to access the special filenames, TC would alert users since it becomes out of TC's ecosystem or TC may also have to rename such special filenames as 7zip does during file copy/move operations or for third party apps to access these special filenames?

Just following up. Does this make sense or is it too complicated to implement? if it is complicated could you at least do something about opening a file handle to /Device/SerialX or some how time out after a period of inactive communication from such device handles?

Sorry, I don't know a method to find out which special names like AUX or COM1 are in use and which not. There can be a lot of com port numbers with USB to serial converters, for example I have seen COM24 for an Arduino.

maybe this could help? https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/293273/Ready-to-use-serial-port-enumeration-list-box

I do serial port enumeration for the "System information" box, but it doesn't detect all reserved names. Also it's not really fast, so I cannot use it for every single file you copy (the user can plugin a USB to COM port cable whenever he wants).