Windows vs. Linux

[Bryan Olson]

Duncan Booth wrote:
> Bryan Olson wrote:
> 
>> Duncan Booth wrote:
>>> Any other Microsoft commands I try all complain about 'invalid
>>> switch'. 
 >>
>> The first I noticed were their build tools. Their version of
>> "make", called "nmake", and their visual studio tools will
>> accept either forward or backward slashes in paths.
>>
> Ok, pedantically I meant the commands that come as part of the system. Most 
> external tools such as Microsoft's compilers have always accepted forward 
> slashes interchangeably with backslashes. They also usually accept '-' as 
> an option character interchangeably with '/'. The 'standard' commands 
> though seem to go to a lot of effort to reject forward slashes in paths, 
> and the CD command seems to be the only one where this usage gets through 
> the net.

That seems right, though I don't think Microsoft is deliberately
being difficult. They never put much effort into the command
line; they were trying to imitate the the Mac GUI more than the
Unix shell.

I just tried, and on XP the "explorer" will accept forward
slashes, immediately re-displaying them as backslashes.


-- 
--Bryan