When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

[Duncan Booth]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

Grant Edwards <grante@visi.co m> wrote in
news:slrnap5gfa .aol.grante@loc alhost.localdom ain:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> I _think_ (can't be sure...) that at a C-libraries level the switch
>> occurred either between DOS 1.0 and 1.1, or at the time of release of
>> 2.0.[/color]
>
> I don't think 1.0 had a hierarchical filesystem at all did it?[/color]

That is correct, originally DOS like CP/M didn't have a concept of
directories, all file access used file control blocks. When they added
directories in Dos 2.0 they added new int21 calls which supported the
directory paths and these have always accepted either forward or reversed
slashes as path separators interchangeably .

Dos 3.0 added an int21 call to canonicalize pathnames which included
converting all forward slashes to backslashes.

--
Duncan Booth duncan@rcp.co.u k
int month(char *p){return(1248 64/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12 )["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\x a\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?

[Peter Hansen]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

Andrew Dalke wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Bob Gailer:[color=green]
> > Good question. Certainly later than:
> >
> > Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
> > (C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.
> >
> > C:\>cd /samis
> > The syntax of the command is incorrect.[/color]
>
> The shell is parsing the line and interprets the "/" as a
> command-line flag, Try a relative path, like
>
> cd ./samis[/color]

And of course, there's always:

C:\>ver
Windows 98 [Version 4.10.2222]

C:\>cd ./temp
Too many parameters - /TEMP

C:\>cd ./temp"
Too many parameters - /TEMP"

C:\>cd "./temp"

C:\>


But I digress... *you* guys were talking about operating systems. ;-)

-Peter

[Ronald Oussoren]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?


On 26 sep 2003, at 5:50, Jules Dubois wrote:[color=blue]
>
> The Windows kernels are the same. The internals of the operating
> system
> accept either.
>[/color]
That's not entirely true, in WinNT derivatives the backslash is the
real seperator at the kernel level, the Win32 perform some conversion
that allows forward slashes and recognizes special files like CON, PRN,
et.al..

To make live even more interesting, only unicode paths with backslashes
as seperators can address all files (at least when I last looked at it
about 2 years ago). When using unicodepaths you can use '\\?\' as a
prefix on paths to turn off the conversion I mention above (see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/

fileio/base/naming_a_file.a sp). The fun you can have on windows, I've
managed to create files that cannot be removed :-)

Ronald

[Stephen Horne]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:05:50 GMT, "Andrew Dalke"
<adalke@mindspr ing.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Bob Gailer:[color=green]
>> Good question. Certainly later than:
>>
>> Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
>> (C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.
>>
>> C:\>cd /samis
>> The syntax of the command is incorrect.[/color]
>
>The shell is parsing the line and interprets the "/" as a
>command-line flag, Try a relative path, like
>
> cd ./samis[/color]

Nope...

F:\>cd ./dev

F:\>cd .\dev

F:\Dev>


Notice how the forward slash version doesn't change directories, but
the back slash version does. My guess is that it is being taken as...

cd . /<unknown option>

The big question being why the unknown option doesn't get an error
message, as it normally does.


--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Robin Becker]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

In article <b16e4ef7.03092 51550.724a57f@p osting.google.c om>, Stephen
Ferg <steve@ferg.org > writes[color=blue]
>I have a question that is not directly Python-related. But I thought
>I'd ask the most erudite group that I know... :-)
>
>When did Windows start accepting the forward slash as a path separator
>character?
>
>At one time, it was accepted as a truism that Windows (like MS-DOS)
>was different from Unix because Windows used the backslash as the path
>separator character, whereas Unix used the forward slash.
>
>But now, among a small group of cognoscenti, it is a truism that this
>is a myth, and that Windows will allow you to use either the forward
>or the backward slash as a pathname separator.
>
>I hypothesize that originally Windows accepted only the backslash, and
>then at some time it changed to accept the forward slash as well.
>Does anyone know when that change occurred? Was it with the
>introduction of support for long filenames in NT and Win95?[/color]

I seem to remember getting an early C compiler from M$ around 1983/5 and
being pleasantly surprised that '/' was acceptable. So far as I know
this has been true from the earliest days. I suspect it was because of
all the unix C code that people wanted to work without effort.
--
Robin Becker

[Stephen Horne]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:44:30 +0200, Ronald Oussoren
<oussoren@cistr on.nl> wrote:
[color=blue]
>The fun you can have on windows, I've
>managed to create files that cannot be removed :-)[/color]

I've had that one simply by saving a web page in IE. Seriously
annoying.


--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Stephen Horne]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:03:10 GMT, "Andrew Dalke"
<adalke@mindspr ing.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Stephen Ferg:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> At one time, it was accepted as a truism that Windows (like MS-DOS)
>> was different from Unix because Windows used the backslash as the path
>> separator character, whereas Unix used the forward slash.[/color]
>
>It was? My copy of Norton's Guide to the IBM PC makes
>the explicit statement that directories were directly influenced by
>unix. I actually regard this as a point of similarity. The character
>used is a minor issue.[/color]

Directly influenced, yes - but as DOS 1 didn't have subdirectories but
did have options marked with '/', the unix subdirectories couldn't be
duplicated exactly in DOS 2. The character used *is* a minor issue,
but it is still a difference - what Stephen Ferg wrote is, I believe,
valid.

Even if DOS was internally happy to accept '/' as a path separator,
still the 'accepted as a truism' bit rings true to me - what is
accepted as an obvious truth is not always actually true, and to most
people users DOS was the command line and Windows was just a shell on
top of DOS - the 'truism' was what people could see, not what was
hidden away in the INT 21h calls that only programmers cared about.


--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Bengt Richter]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 09:47:47 +0100, Stephen Horne <$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$@$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$.co.uk > wrote:
[color=blue]
>On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:44:30 +0200, Ronald Oussoren
><oussoren@cist ron.nl> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>The fun you can have on windows, I've
>>managed to create files that cannot be removed :-)[/color]
>
>I've had that one simply by saving a web page in IE. Seriously
>annoying.
>[/color]
Do you mean windows exploder will not even delete it with right-click, delete?
Or doesn't it show up at all? (how do you know it exists? dos dir?)

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Andrew Dalke]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

Stephen Feng:[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >> At one time, it was accepted as a truism that Windows (like MS-DOS)
> >> was different from Unix because Windows used the backslash as the path
> >> separator character, whereas Unix used the forward slash.[/color][/color][/color]

Me, arguing that the directory structure between DOS and its Windows
derivatives is a point of similarity, compared to the other differences.

Stephen Horne:[color=blue]
> Directly influenced, yes - but as DOS 1 didn't have subdirectories ...[/color]

Right. I said that as well ... Plus, Stephen's Feng's comparison
is predicated on comparing how directories are accessed, so it's
cheating to go back to when DOS didn't have directories. ;)
[color=blue]
> what is accepted as an obvious truth is not always actually true,[/color]

A truer word has rarely been said.

BTW, the similarity-but-not-the-same between DOS and unix
caused me problems when I started using unix. See, under DOS
there's this great utility called "unerase" which can be used to
recover files accidentally deleted. Only I would deliberately
delete a file in order to probe the system; eg, is this file really
used?

And I wanted to see if the script really used the C compiler....

Had to reinstall IRIX to fix that one.

Andrew
dalke@dalkescie ntific.com

[Cousin Stanley]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

>>The fun you can have on windows, I've[color=blue][color=green]
>>managed to create files that cannot be removed[/color]
>
>I've had that one simply by saving a web page in IE. Seriously
>annoying.
>[/color]
| Do you mean windows exploder will not even delete it with right-click, delete?
| Or doesn't it show up at all? (how do you know it exists? dos dir?)

Under Win98 they show up
AND can NOT be deleted from the Right-Click context menu ...

They can be deleted with no problem under DOS ....

The problem in Win98 for me came from saving web pages
with extra LONG file names ....

--
Cousin Stanley
Human Being
Phoenix, Arizona

[Stephen Horne]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On 27 Sep 2003 17:20:44 GMT, bokr@oz.net (Bengt Richter) wrote:
[color=blue]
>On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 09:47:47 +0100, Stephen Horne <$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$@$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$.co.uk > wrote:
>[color=green]
>>On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:44:30 +0200, Ronald Oussoren
>><oussoren@cis tron.nl> wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>>The fun you can have on windows, I've
>>>managed to create files that cannot be removed :-)[/color]
>>
>>I've had that one simply by saving a web page in IE. Seriously
>>annoying.
>>[/color]
>Do you mean windows exploder will not even delete it with right-click, delete?
>Or doesn't it show up at all? (how do you know it exists? dos dir?)[/color]

There was no way I could find to delete it - not even writing a C++
program directly calling the DeleteFile API call.

I don't remember exact details - not even for sure whether it was
Win98 or Win2000 (it was too long ago for WinXP). I do remember that
the non-deletable file was in a deeply nested set of pointless folders
created by saving that web site.

Basically, it ended up sitting on my machine annoying me for ages -
I'm not sure if a new machine or a reinstall put an end to it (it was
my work machine, which tends to get fewer reinstalls).


--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Grant Edwards]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path

In article <YAZd/ks/Kjpc089yn@the-wire.com>, Mel Wilson wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>I have a question that is not directly Python-related. But I thought
>>>I'd ask the most erudite group that I know... :-)
>>>When did Windows start accepting the forward slash as a path separator
>>>character?[/color][/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Internally, the routines in the API have accepted '/' as a path
> separator for a long, long time. It's the command-line
> processors that kick up a fuss.[/color]

And that could always be fixed by running a real shell a-la MKS,
Cygwin, etc.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Hello. I know
at the divorce rate among
visi.com unmarried Catholic Alaskan
females!!

[JanC]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

Stephen Horne <$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$@$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$.co.uk > schreef:
[color=blue]
> I do remember that the non-deletable file was in a deeply nested set
> of pointless folders created by saving that web site.[/color]

IIRC that is or was a bug on (some) Windows versions: the path+filename you
have to pass to the Delete File API function could be too long for the
reserved string buffer length (256 bytes), or something like that...

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On 27 Sep 2003 17:20:44 GMT, rumours say that bokr@oz.net (Bengt
Richter) might have written:
[color=blue]
>Do you mean windows exploder will not even delete it with right-click, delete?
>Or doesn't it show up at all? (how do you know it exists? dos dir?)[/color]

I have 110MB (or so they seem) worth of files (2893 files) in my W2k SP4
laptop's c:\recycler\npr otect folder that can't be accessed or deleted.
Norton Protect is long uninstalled, but operating on the files gives
(example):

C:\RECYCLER\NPR OTECT\00041753.
The system cannot find the file specified.

The disk shows as healthy in Disk Manager, and scandisk or
what's-its-name runs successfully. Go figure. Ils sont fous ces
Redmontains! (index finger running wild circles)
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best,
Microsoft Security Alert: the Matrix began as open source.

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

Re: When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 17:22:41 GMT, rumours say that "Andrew Dalke"
<adalke@mindspr ing.com> might have written:
[color=blue]
>BTW, the similarity-but-not-the-same between DOS and unix
>caused me problems when I started using unix. See, under DOS
>there's this great utility called "unerase" which can be used to
>recover files accidentally deleted. Only I would deliberately
>delete a file in order to probe the system; eg, is this file really
>used?[/color]

Safe wisdom: mv (move, ren for old DOS) would be better, right?
[color=blue]
>And I wanted to see if the script really used the C compiler....
>
>Had to reinstall IRIX to fix that one.[/color]

If 'inst same' wasn't enough, then that should have been a really old
version of Irix... :(
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best,
Microsoft Security Alert: the Matrix began as open source.