🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15200040@hpcvlo.UUCP> bill@hp-pcd.UUCP (bill frolik) writes:
>Microsoft didn't document SWITCHAR because they didn't want
>people to use it, since it can potentially add a lot of confusion.

Yeah, the real question is, why did they add the code in the first
place?  Sounds like somebody working on the code added it without
approval.  An alternative theory is that when MS-DOS 2.0 was first
created, they weren't so sure that they were right in making / the
option characer and \ the filename separator, and added some Trojan
horse to their own software so that at a later time they could switch
and people with old copies of MS-DOS would be able to use new software
without getting a new copy of MS-DOS.  Obviously, the switch never came,
so maybe it should be removed from MS-DOS 3.0 (or has it already been
removed?).

Incidentally, the file system always accepts both / and \ in file names;
it's only the shell (COMMAND.COM) and some applications that don't grok
/ in file names because it is always seen as an option, even in the
middle of a word!
-- 
	Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@mcvax.uucp>