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From: BRACKENRIDGE%USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Switchar Problem
Message-ID: <15204@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Jan-84 18:57:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.15204
Posted: Sat Jan  7 18:57:00 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jan-84 01:49:29 EST
Lines: 31

From:  Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>

I suppose it might be instructive for all concerned to reprint Gordon
Letvin's warnings about switchar from last July's issue of Info-IBMPC:


Date:    22 Jul 83 12:03:53-PDT (Fri)
To:      info-ibmpc @ Usc-Isib
From:    microsoft!gordonl @ UW-Beaver
Subject: SWITCHAR Warning

Recent articles have described the SWITCHAR facility in MSDOS 2.0.
This changes the path character from "\" to "/" and the switch
character from "/" to "-".

Please be warned that this feature is NOT DOCUMENTED and, in fact,
(often) DOES NOT WORK.  Yes, the OS and COMMAND.COM will correctly use
the new characters, but other utilities may become confused.  For
example, I used SWITCHAR on my own PC, then did a full dump a few days
later.  After reformatting my hard disk I discovered that a dump taken
with SWITCHAR in effect cannot be read.

In short, if it's undocumented, use at your own risk, and be aware
that you may encounter totally unexpected problems.

        gordon letwin
        microsoft

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