Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote in a message to Peter Knapper:

 JdBP> An alternative scheme, one that is similar but that doesn't 
 JdBP> have quite as many problems, would be to extend the Universal 
 JdBP> Naming Convention to include local volumes. Volumes would 
 JdBP> automatically be assigned names such as \\.\HARDDISK0PARTITION2 
 JdBP> , which one could use directly as UNC path prefixes if one 
 JdBP> liked.  This avoids the third problem above, since it means 
 JdBP> that all volumes are automatically recognised and immediately 
 JdBP> accessible, and eliminates the first problem since by assigning 
 JdBP> UNC names automatically one doesn't have to have a manually 
 JdBP> created configuration table of "mount points".  The second 
 JdBP> problem is resolved by having drive letters mapped onto these 
 JdBP> UNC prefixes.  (Indeed, one might be able to extend those parts 
 JdBP> of the 32-bit OS/2 system API that currently only deal with 
 JdBP> drive letter assignments to remote filesystems to include local 
 JdBP> filesystems as well.)  So "C:\CONFIG.SYS" would expand, 
 JdBP> internally, to "\\.\HARDDISK0PARTITION2\CONFIG.SYS".

Actually,  I've been doing some of that when I want to use a browser for some
reason on a local file.  Instead of http://  I use
file://localhost.whatever...

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