Subject: Re: pathname conversion
From: [email-masked] (Hauke Fath)

24 Sep 1997 01:11:58 -0700
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
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To: [email-masked]
Cc: "John R. Dennis" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]

At 18:30 23.09.97 GMT, Mikey wrote:
>Because Microsoft's programmers are IDIOTS, and 
>have been ever since 1982 when dos 1 came out

MSDOS would never have come off the ground without the possibility of
easily porting CP/M software (dBase, WordStar,...). DOS 1 was a verbatim
CP/M clone, and CP/M has drive letters and uses the forward slash "/" as a
command option tag. That's why DOS introduced the backslash as path separator.

>All of these file system features have been around 
>since before dos 1 was released, at first via a file system
>called minix, and more recently and in an even more advanced
>form called ext2, try installing a real OS, called linux.

When we say DOS 2 we are talking early eighties -- Xenix, 4.1BSD, AT&T Sys
V.2. Not even Berkeley Fast Filing System (iirc 1982/3), and definitely no
Linsux Ext2FFS.

At 16:45 23.09.97 -0400, John R. Dennis wrote:
>>>>>> "Mikey" == Mikey  <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>    Mikey> Because Microsoft's programmers are IDIOTS, and have been
>    Mikey> ever since 1982 when dos 1 came out...
>
>You listed a number of reason why DOS/Win32 is brain dead (no argument
>here) and why the UNIX solution is superior (once again no
>argument). But what you didn't do is answer my question, which was why
>are tools targeted for one environment not compatible with that environment?

Because DOS and its mates use as path separator what is an escape char to
UN*X tools. To change this, you'd have to touch virtually every UN*X tool
-- you'd lose compatibility with the UN*X software base while creating a
proprietary environment that isn't really compatible with the host
environment because it introduces features that have no match there.

>Am I in the minority when I suggest porting includes making the port
>compatible with the target environment?

The price of losing compatibility to UN*X (shell) scripts and tools would
be too high. You could then just as well stick with COMMAND.COM or 4DOS.

	hauke

-- 
Hauke Fath                              Melog Software GmbH
                                        D-69115 Heidelberg
[email-masked]                             Ruf +49-6221-1333-0, Fax -33

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