Message-Id: <9604032212.AA18047@gnu.mc.xerox.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Cc: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Style of slashes and `system' 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 02 Apr 1996 21:16:38 PST."
             <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 960403070955 DOT 16244D-100000 AT is> 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 14:12:23 PST
From: "Marty Leisner" <leisner AT sdsp DOT mc DOT xerox DOT com>

> 
> 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).
> 

yes, I know...also join is gone...

> > 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.

not sure why the library has to know anything about this...

for example, I don't have cp and I use msh...I wanted to copy a file in a 
loop, so I just did:


for i in 1 2 3 4 5 
do
	command /c copy foo.ps lpt1:
done

you can always escape the \ whenever you need to...


-- 
marty
leisner AT sdsp DOT mc DOT xerox DOT com  
Member of the League for Programming Freedom