From: Mike Dvorkin <mike@...>
Date: 2006-09-07T14:46:49+09:00
Subject: Re: A little idiom I like

Ahh, yes, it's pure DCL thingie carried all they way to cmd.exe. They  
called it command qualifiers back then :-).

Best,
Mike Dvorkin
http://www.rubywizards.com

On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:28 PM, Hal Fulton wrote:

> Mike Dvorkin wrote:
>> Don't think it was DEC. On PDP-11/RSX and VAX/VMS directories  
>> were  enclosed in square brackets, something like SY:[0,1] or DUA0: 
>> [SYS $ROOT.DIR.SUBDIR], always with unique [ ] delimiters.
>
> Yes, the brackets were used that way... but Rick was talking
> about the use of slashes for switches (the way Unix uses the
> hyphen). That's a DECism, though it may have come from
> elsewhere -- as in KJOB /F or simply K/F
>
>
> Hal
>
>
>> Best,
>> Mike Dvorkin
>> http://www.rubywizards.com
>> On Sep 6, 2006, at 2:16 PM, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>>> On 9/6/06, Berger, Daniel <Daniel.Berger@qwest.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Indeed.  This is why all paths generated using the pathname2  
>>>> package
>>>> convert all forward slashes to backslashes.  Also, the various   
>>>> PathXXX
>>>> functions do NOT work with forward slashes.
>>>
>>>
>>> If only Gary Kildall had not decided to use / instead of - for
>>> parameter markers in CP/M, so that it wasn't taken when directories
>>> were added. I'm pretty sure that he's the one to blame, or did it  
>>> come
>>> from one of the DEC operating systems he used as a model for the
>>> 'shell?'
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Rick DeNatale
>>>
>>> My blog on Ruby
>>> http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
>>>
>
>