And it is also obviously bull. DOS 1.x (which was a pure CP/M clone)
used / as the option character, so for compatibility they couldn't use
it for paths... *especially* since DOS made it legal to type the
option immediately adjacent to a pathname (COPY FOO BAR/V). DOS 2.x
actually had an option to use - as the option character, which made it
possible to use / as a pathname separator. DOS 2.x also had a kernel
option to only recognize devices if the path was prepended with \DEV\
(or /DEV/), instead of polluting the namespace of every single
directory. I believe OS/2 actually used this.
To this day, every version of DOS 2.0 and later allows you to use / as
the pathname separator in system calls -- but most utilities will see
it as an option marker.)
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/