Xah Lee's Unixism

[SM Ryan]

rpw3 at rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
# Craig A. Finseth  <news at finseth.com> wrote:
# +---------------
# | Ville Vainio  <ville at spammers.com> wrote:
# | >... and / as path separator still screws up most of their cmd line
# | >programs (which think / is for command line options).
# | >Microsoft probably thought avoiding compatibility is a good idea, and
# | >have only lately started to have some regrets...
# | 
# | Wrong.  The / was chosen as the command line option separator because
# | whoever wrote MSDOS was looking to CP/M, who modelled their commands
# | after a PDP-11 operating system (RT-11?).
# +---------------
# 
# Which, like PS/8 & OS-8 [and "DECsystem-8" from Geordia Tech] for the
# PDP-8, modelled the command syntax after that of the venerable PDP-10!!

There's a story about why railroad tracks are spaced the way they are.

Dig deep enough and traces of old DEC, IBM, CDC, Honeywell, and Burroughs
can still be found.

--
SM Ryan http://www.rawbw.com/~wyrmwif/
I'm not even supposed to be here today.