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From: bob@nbires.UUCP (Bob Bruck)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Changing the dumb '\' to '/'...
Message-ID: <426@nbires.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 12:22:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: nbires.426
Posted: Thu Jun 13 12:22:53 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 10:10:00 EDT
References: <229@timeinc.UUCP>
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 37

> I'll assue that somebody out there has already modified the code
> on the PC to allw e to use '/'s  instead of the dumb backslash that
> IBM (Microsoft?) imposed on us...
> 
> Could somebody send me the patch?
> Thanks
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ross M. Greenberg  @ Time Inc, New York 
>               --------->{ihnp4 | vax135}!timeinc!greenber<---------

The reason MS-DOS uses '\' as the directory delimiter is that the slash ('/')
is used to indicate SWITCHES in the command line.  MS-DOS (PC-DOS) has a call
to change the SWITCH character to any character you would like (I use a dash
'-' because it is consistant with UNIX conventions).  If you change your
SWITCH character, the directory delimeter will change to the familiar UNIX
convention '/'.  The following short program can be entered into DEBUG and
saved,  all numbers are specified in HEX.

	MOV AX,3700	; AH=CharOper, AL=Get it
	INT 21		; DOS Command
	MOV DL,2D	; DL was 2F (slash), change it to 2D (dash)
	MOV AX,3701	; AH=CharOper, AL=Set it
	INT 21		; DOS Command
	INT 3		; Exit from program

On PC-DOS or MS-DOS 2.x any time DOS specifies pathnames after this program is
run, it will show the slash '/' as the directory delimeter.  On PC-DOS 3.x
it will still use the backslash '\' to display pathnames.  On any version of
DOS, one will be able to use the slash character to send a pathname to DOS.
Remember to now use dash '-' to pass flags to programs.  Also, some programs
may not check to see what the current SWITCH character is ( some programmers
are really sloppy :-) and may require the user to specify pathnames using
backslash.

Bob Bruck  (hao!allegra!...)|nbires|bob