Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 07:16:38 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Marty Leisner <leisner AT sdsp DOT mc DOT xerox DOT com>
Cc: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Style of slashes and `system' 
In-Reply-To: <9604021919.AA09792@gnu.mc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960403070955.16244D-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Tue, 2 Apr 1996, Marty Leisner wrote:

> dos 3.x had a switchar command (to globally change \ to /).

Sorry, that's no longer true in DOS 4.0 and later versions.  The newer 
versions just ignore that command and the DOS function that implemented 
its support (Int 21h/AX=3701h).

> the dos kernel doesn't really care whether we use \ or /)

I was talking about commands internal to COMMAND.COM (like `del' or 
`ren') and the programs that come with DOS (aka ``external commands'', 
like `xcopy').  None of them knows about forward slashes because they do 
their own command-line parsing and take `/' to begin an option/switch.