Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator?

Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by bitwize on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:26PM (#20004972)

Because DOS used the slash as a switch specifier, aping popular DEC operating systems of its day, but did NOT adopt DEC's approach to specifying paths and subdirectories, opting for a more Unix-like approach in DOS 2.0.

And Windows inherited a lot of DOS baggage.

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by PhasmaFelis on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:40PM (#20005085)

How did TOPS-10 handle directories? The article says "Note that the odd numbers in square brackets [27,5434] are the TOPS-10 way of specifying directories," but doesn't give any more detail.

I am shamelessly uninterested in poring over the linked TOPS-10 manual to find out, so I'm hoping you know. :D

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by skissane on Friday May 24, 2019 @05:08PM (#20005302)

The numbers are a "project programmer number", or PPN. The "project number" is like a bit like a GID, and the "programmer number" identifies the user within the project (so a bit like a UID).

A lot of early operating systems didn't have hierarchical directories. It was common to have either one single directory for the whole volume (like CP/M and DOS 1.0 had), or else a two-level structure in which each user gets their own directory but no nesting of directories is allowed. TOPS-10 PPN's are like that.

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by seanmcdirmid on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:36PM (#20005057)

CP/M had nothing to do with DEC, and digital research had nothing to do with DEC either. What was the DEC connection? Did VMS use backslash for paths?

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by kragen on Saturday May 25, 2019 @01:49AM (#20007343)

Intergalactic Digital Research's CP/M was a very close copy of DEC RT-11, though not quite as close a copy as MS-DOS was of CP/M, so CP/M had a great deal to do with DEC.

VMS, which came later and is therefore irrelevant, used . to separate directory names in paths.

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by syntheticnature on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:40PM (#20005089)

Per the article, DEC's TOPS-10.

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Re:Why Does Windows Really Use Backslash as Path Separator? by tapland on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:47PM (#20005146)

Can't say how it was back in the day but we use something like [HOMEDIR.SUBDIR2.SUBDIRC] on OpenVMS now.

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