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.
NT originally had a Unix subsystem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
61–70 of 166 posts
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Release != leak
Even the leaks contain enough of Microsoft's spirit in their comments: https://gist.github.com/turbo/75f0905275c29a3049f983cfe273ea... ;)
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>in Linux you have ‘root’ and everything else Well, you do have: - capabilities (which are so coarse-grained as to be practically useless) - 8 types of namespaces - seccomp-bpf - LSM (AppArmor, SELinux, TOMOYO, etc)
Yes though a lot of this came "long after" the NT kernel (at least after NT 4.0) A lot of innovations on NT are late as well to be fair, like the whole Application Views (?) of the system (basically an FS/Registry app sandboxing)
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another viewpoint: the problem is caused by Unix allowing any character in filenames (other than slash and null). Other platforms are more restrictive in what characters filenames are allowed to contain. If you banned the '-' character from starting a filename, the problem wouldn't happen. I personally think Unix allowing almost any character in filenames was a mistake. You can put newlines and other control characte…
A coworker of mine got into trouble when he named a directory ~ and then tried to delete it.
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#65Is there a name for this phenomenon? Everyone knows it’s a slash except when its used for something computery. Then it somehow becomes a backslash.
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there is this different timeline in the universe where Microsoft decides to keep selling Xenix instead of focusing on MS-DOS.
... and where it is not successful.
And they were kind of right, the Year of Desktop UNIX/POSIX is WSL, Android, ChromeOS, macOS.
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I see, didn't know that
(Another key difference is that on UNIX the shell expands '*' before passing it to a program, but CMD doesn't so each program has to do its own globbing)
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#68Probably the second most expensive mistake after 'null'. Discuss... :)
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood why Unix chose "-" for options. It creates unnecessary confusion. E.g. when deleting a directory called "-rf"
For everybody reading, a directory called "-rf" is deleted by writing "rm -- -rf"; -- indicates the end of all user-provided options.
Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
* It is (with a lot of ifs and buts) a microkernel * it is optimized for integration with third party software from people who don’t have the source, so for instance the driver model is interesting * the built in configuration system (the registry) and how it’s used throughout * the (underused) personalities system you can use to show different apis to different binaries * the security model is much more interesting,…
>in Linux you have ‘root’ and everything else Well, you do have: - capabilities (which are so coarse-grained as to be practically useless) - 8 types of namespaces - seccomp-bpf - LSM (AppArmor, SELinux, TOMOYO, etc)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server...
Windows also differentiates between the human ADMINISTRATOR account and machine "root" accounts like "LOCALSYSTEM".
User accounts are also disambiguated by "domain"; ADMINISTRATOR on the local machine is not automatically the same as the domain-wide ADMINISTRATOR.