f python?

[Dave Angel]

On 04/08/2012 08:04 PM, David Robinow wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>        The main reason, as I recall, for the command line using \ for file
>> paths is that it inherited / as command OPTION prefix from CP/M; MS-DOS
>> being a 32-bit work-alike for CP/M in the first generation.
>  I also thought it was because Bill Gates used a PDP-11 in high school
> and DEC used the / as command OPTION
> I found out later that Gates purchased DOS rather than wrote it, so
> this story may be erroneous. Nevertheless, at the time, DEC was way
> bigger than AT&T (in computers) and the choice really wasn't
> surprising.

CP/M was indeed the inspiration for QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS), and it
shows in lots of ways, right down to the layout of the PSP at the
beginning of program's memory images.  There was a separate group within
Microsoft doing Xenix ( ~ Unix), and the two did not cooperate.

But just as important, just as it was "clear" that PC programs would
never need more than 640k, it was also clear that disks would never get
bigger than a few meg.  Subdirectories were not part of the original
picture, and were not supported till MSDOS 2.0

-- 

DaveA