Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–166 of 166 posts

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#161

Post by tinus_hn »

macksd wrote: post #89
tinus_hn wrote: post #50

Earlier 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,…

I'm very intrigued by that list. Any recommendations on where to read technical, internal details?

There’s books but also the ReactOS project has been working for many years on replicating the functionality, so you can look at their source.

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#162

Post by hackerbabz »

veltas wrote: post #158
hackerbabz wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same at all. Hash-tag is just a name for that symbol. It's not the original name, but it is a name. "/" is slash! "\" is a backslash! People who do not type windows paths have probably never actually encountered a backslash in their entire lives, but when they see a url they think that the symbol they see all the time in other contexts (/) suddenly has a different name!

A 'hash-tag' is a feature of internet apps like Twitter where you put a '#' in front of some topic name to relate your content with similar content. It's named after the character which is known as a 'hash' among other things. Or are you saying 'hash-tag' is the name because although it's a mistake it's used so much now it's considered language? Language isn't one big blob, even though among many people it could now…

But there isn’t another character that anyone calls “hashtag”. It’s like if everyone nontech called “:” a “semicolon” only when it’s preceeded by “http”. There is something else called semicolon and its not the thing in the url.

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#163

Post by ynik »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
r00f wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, didn't know that

Yes, and this is absolutely maddening when trying to do cross-platform work because some programs support / in filenames while others interpret them as arguments. (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)

Pretty much all Windows programs support / in filenames. The main issue is some cmd builtins like mkdir/cd/del which have weird parsing rules where every / is interpreted as starting a command-line switch, even if not preceded by a space. But even there, you only need to use quotes (mkdir "c:/test") to suppress the interpretation as a switch and then you can use paths with slashes just fine in batch files.

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#164

Post by account42 »

hibbelig wrote: post #95
account42 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but imagine having to use Shift for every path separator you type.

Germans type Shift+7 to get /. Imagine their horror when having to type AltGr+- to get a backslash. At least with Shift you can choose which of the Shift keys to use, but there is only one AltGr key (it is to the right of the spacebar, the US keyboard layout has the right Alt key there). It used to be you could use Ctrl+Alt+-, too, and at least those were available on the left hand side, too. But I do not know if Ctr…

> Germans type Shift+7 to get /.

Those that are too stubborn to use QWERTY, yes. Seriously, the german keyboard layout is horrible for programming and the few umlauts can easily be entered using compose keys / dead keys / alt combinations / whatever you fancy.

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#165

Post by cheph »

dmitrygr wrote: post #142
cheph wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Async-by-default I/O? What? Can you elaborate? I mean if you want non blocking IO from an fd in Linux, you can just do that. Not sure what defaults have to do with anything. Your code will still have to be written appropriately.

Default in linux is read()/write() and be blocked. Doing async is a lot more work and until relatively (to NT timelines) recently quite limited (select). On NT the standard way is async, and doing things in the block-and-wait way is abnormal and unusual. Defaults matter. Because that's what most people will do.

Linux use read(2)/write(2) for both blocking and non-blocking. Still don't understand what you mean by how NT does it. Either your code is written to accomodate Async IO or not.

Re: Why is the DOS path character "\"? (2005)

#166

Post by naewonawonga »

skissane wrote: post #155
naewonawonga wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit provincial. That might have been true before mainstream internet access, but the average user these days is likely more familiar with unix style paths via URLs than local filesystem paths. Also, most non-unix operating systems that don't happen to be made by Microsoft also use the forward slashes for paths.

> the average user these days is likely more familiar with unix style paths via URLs than local filesystem paths The average user ignores the contents of the address bar. "That's all tech gobbledegook". Increasingly, browsers even hide its contents from the user, just displaying the domain name, making the average user even less aware of it. > Also, most non-unix operating systems that don't happen to be made by Micr…

>> What are "non-unix operating systems that don't happen to be made by Microsoft".

It's a pretty big list. To name a few:

Beos (and derivatives), AmigaOS (and derrivatives), GEOS, Commodore DOS, Temple OS, TRON, plenty of Real Time Operating Systems...

Post reply on HN