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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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It’s easy to be backwards compatible when you’re backwards in general.
As what often happens, using
\for paths is for backwards compatibility.Neither CP/M nor MS-DOS 1.0 had folders. When folders were added in MS-DOS 2.0, the syntax had to be backwards compatible. DOS already used forward slashes for command-line options (e.g.
DIR /W) so using them for folders would have been ambiguous - does thatDIRcommand have a/Woption, or is it viewing the contents of theWdirectory at the root of the drive? Backslashes weren't used for anything so they used them for folders.This is the same reason why you can't create files with device names like
con,lpt1, and so on. DOS 2.0 has to retain backwards compatibility with 1.0 where you could do something likeTYPE foo.txt > LPT1to send a document to a printer. The device names are reserved globally so they can work regardless of what folder you're in.Well, better to be backwards with backwards compatibility than to just be backwards.
looks at Apple