31–40 of 166 posts
Can anyone explain why was that a problem, from technical point of view? They already had paths starting with "driveletter:", not like unix with just "/". Why would it be a problem for parser to distinguish between filepaths and arguments switch?
"DIR \W" does a DIR of the "\W" directory on the current drive.
"DIR /W" does a DIR listing in wide format.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the comments on that blog post says the backslash was invented by Bob Bemer at the time he developed ASCII in the 1960s, also linking to a page that supports the claim: https://web.archive.org/web/20100612011533/http://thocp.net/...
I briefly checked comments and missed that. ;-) I would be more cautious to say that he invented backslashes, as it's unknown that he was aware of earlier uses of backslashes. (I've checked both the page and its citations and they gave no more information.)
You're right of course, I was just relaying what the post there said. There was prior usage as early as in the 1940s as you mentioned. According to Wikipedia, [1] its origins are unknown:
> As of January 2021, Wikipedia editors have not been able to find the origin of this character nor even the purposes to which it was put before the 1960s. The earliest known reference found to date is a 1945 bulletin from the Teletype Corporation that lists it as a replaceable part for its Wheatstone perforator.
On the other hand, I think it's safe to say it would have remained an obscure character had it not been for Bob Bemer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really look forward to the day NT's source is released. It's a truly fascinating kernel. Imagine somebody building an entire Unix on top of NT! Like WSL, but even beyond.
What special about NT kernel that's not in linux kernel ?
One reason might be that DOS used the "/" character for options, whereas in other operating systems the "-" character is used.
I never understood why Unix chose "-" for options. It creates unnecessary confusion. E.g. when deleting a directory called "-rf"
I personally think Unix allowing almost any character in filenames was a mistake. You can put newlines and other control characters in filenames. That has very little legitimate use, and is a potential source of security and other bugs. There is a proposal to amend the Unix standards to disallow control characters in filenames. But it doesn't look like it is going to be successful: https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251
Can anyone explain why was that a problem, from technical point of view? They already had paths starting with "driveletter:", not like unix with just "/". Why would it be a problem for parser to distinguish between filepaths and arguments switch?
On modern Windows you can use slash, but you have to quote the argument e.g. dir "C:/windows"
You can even mix both types together e.g. dir "C:/windows\system32" which is convenient when using code modules that only output unix style paths. No need to clean them up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood why Unix chose "-" for options. It creates unnecessary confusion. E.g. when deleting a directory called "-rf"
Technically deleting a directory is done with the rmdir command. But rm with flags is flexible enough that I've seen very few people use rmdir
Can anyone explain why was that a problem, from technical point of view? They already had paths starting with "driveletter:", not like unix with just "/". Why would it be a problem for parser to distinguish between filepaths and arguments switch?
One reason might be that DOS used the "/" character for options, whereas in other operating systems the "-" character is used.
I never understood why Unix chose "-" for options. It creates unnecessary confusion. E.g. when deleting a directory called "-rf"
Can anyone explain why was that a problem, from technical point of view? They already had paths starting with "driveletter:", not like unix with just "/". Why would it be a problem for parser to distinguish between filepaths and arguments switch?
Because paths don't have to start with a drive letter – a path like \foo\bar is relative to the current drive. "DIR \W" does a DIR of the "\W" directory on the current drive. "DIR /W" does a DIR listing in wide format.