Windows vs. Linux

[Duncan Booth]

Bryan Olson wrote:

> Duncan Booth wrote:
>> I'm not sure ambiguity enters into it. I think perhaps the bad
>> detection of the option happens because the CD command can ignore
>> spaces in its argument. Since it is ignoring spaces they don't
>> actually require a space after the option strings.
> 
> You lost me. Spaces are significant in file names, and slashes
> within the path are used as path separators, as far as I can
> tell.

Sorry I was unclear. It isn't that spaces are ignored, it is that they do 
not count as delimiters in the CD command. In all other DOS commands they 
count as argument delimiters unless they are inside quotes.


>> 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.