Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!masscomp!peora!tarpit!bilver!bill From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc Subject: Re: Where is the long awaited MS DOS 5.0 ? Message-ID: <1991Jan4.190230.10756@bilver.uucp> Date: 4 Jan 91 19:02:30 GMT References: Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL Lines: 39 In article tony@mantis.co.uk (Tony Lezard) writes: ->In article <10110@lanl.gov>, crs@lanl.gov (Charlie Sorsby) writes: -> ->>I've a question about DOS: Is there a real reason for the choice ->>of switch character ("/") and path-element separator ("\")? Or ->>was the choice made gratuitously (or, worse, just to be different ->>from Unix)? I've always assumed that, since in some cases it's ->>possible to use the Unix counterparts, that the choice was ->>arbitrary. ... ->Naah. The "/" character is a well-recognised way of specifying command line ->options. Many systems use it. Hence a command such as "DOS\CHKDSK/F" will ->succeed in passing a parameter "F" to the program "CHKDSK" in directory "DOS". The / switch preceded DOS in the Microsoft arena. If you remember (or if you weren't into computers then this will explain it) Microsoft became the leader in the Basic market with their implementation of Basic on the S-100 machines in the mid-70's. The basic command line switches in Mbasic 4.5 and 5.? were / while I seem to remember that in the 4.2 and earlier the switch was -. The switch was to specify record length, number of files, space, etc. These switches were what Microsoft used in those days, when they were primarily a "language" house . They became an OS house when they ported the ported the Seattle Computer Dos to the PC it was logical they retain those switches. Since you can call a basic program from the command line with switches it's hard to parse a / as a switch flag from / as a file name flag. The / as a "well-recognized" way is because of the popularity of DOS, not that it wanted to be different. If DOS hadn't been the choice for the PC and something else was we might have had the / for the file extension as some of the other small computer disk manager systems of that day did! -- Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP