[Tutor] RE: Why MS chose \

[Doug.Shawhan@ge.com]

IIRC up to and including DOS 3 one could change this behavior, effectively
swapping the switch and the slash. Fortunately I was using an apple// at the
time! :-)


-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Gauld [mailto:alan.gauld@freenet.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 1:54 PM
To: tutor@python.org
Subject: [Tutor] RE: Why MS chose \


Having digest problems so answering this indirectly...

My understanding of the reason for the choice of \ was 
that / was already in use. MS DOS(and its precursor) were 
originally cheap clones of CP/M and CP/M programs 
conventionally used / for command line options.
(CP/M didn't have paths as we know them...)

Thus when MS had to introduce paths(DOS 2?) they chose 
the opposite form of slash.

I just checked and certainly the CP/M assembler and 
MBASIC interpreters both used '/' for commandline options 
as did the original CP/M wordstar. So it sounds reasonable.

Alan G



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