🚀 go-pugleaf

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) writes:

>In article <1989Dec23.024131.6399@eng.umd.edu> linco@eng.umd.edu (Sam Lin) writes:

>| However, I discovered that the path separator also gets transformed from the
>| brain-damaged '\' to the UN*X '/'!!

>  Well, not really. If you look at the DOS manual, you will see that the
>pathname separator is allowed to be / or \, and has been since DOS 2.0!
>...

This is true to an extent.  There used to be a "built-in" feature of DOS
that allowed you to have a "Switchar = -" entry in your config.sys which
then forced the default switch character "/" to become a path separator
(the "\" could then also be used indifferently as a path separator).  This
feature went away around 3.0 to be replaced by various swchar.exe
hacks which provide the same function.  It does appear that Microsoft
no longer approves of the UN*X option (or at least wishes it would go away).
Most people's surprise at "discovering" this feature reveals the suppression.

Sam's final question about DOS getting "confused" I thought interesting.  Do you
have any thoughts on what might be happening?


--
Jimmy Liberato   ...!amdahl!drivax!liberato                              

  "Truly great madness can not be achieved 
   without significant intelligence."  -Henrik Tikkanen