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A comment on macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl. Parent comment

Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by ken on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:19AM (#20111810)
But macOS uses '/' as a directory separator already. They're not going to arbitrarily change trivia like that -- at least, not short of killing the concept of a filesystem altogether. (True, if anyone was going to do that, Apple would, but APFS is brand new. That's not going anywhere.)

Apple isn't changing things just for the sake of change. They're removing 1970's-isms where they hold back the platform. Languages like Ruby/Python/Perl also clean house, from time to time, to remove old cruft. I can't imagine any legacy feature of macOS that Apple would want to deprecate which would make it more difficult to maintain a good port of Ruby/Python/Perl. These are regular general-purpose programming languages now, not just Unix scripting languages.

Yes, Unix has been one of the developer systems of choice for the past couple decades, but it wasn't always so, and it hasn't been the only one. I hear more developers than ever using and enjoying other systems like Windows (Powershell) today. Even Linux today is pretty far from traditional Unix. I just don't see perfect Unix compatibility as a necessary component like it was in 2001.

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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by saagarjha on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:22AM (#20111825)
> macOS uses '/' as a directory separator already

Depends on what level of the UI you're dealing with.

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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by ardy42 on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:28AM (#20111848)
> But macOS uses '/' as a directory separator already.

IIRC, HFS actually uses a ':'.

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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by cynwoody on Thursday June 06, 2019 @02:41AM (#20112148)
Mac OS versions prior to OS X used ':'.

Mac OS X, initially released on 24 March 2001, uses '/', like other Unix-derived systems.

Also, like other unices, OS X uses '\n' as the line ending. Prior Mac OSs used '\r' as the line ending. Windows uses '\r\n'.

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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by pjmlp on Thursday June 06, 2019 @07:16AM (#20113377)
In A/UX you could use both.
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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by hestefisk on Thursday June 06, 2019 @05:07AM (#20112805)
Similar, HFS+ used to provide the option for case insensitivity. Both things were built in for legacy support reasons during the transition from OS 9 to X, as with Carbon.
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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by zwily on Thursday June 06, 2019 @08:13AM (#20113741)
Macs still come with case insensitivity on by default.
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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by codesnik on Thursday June 06, 2019 @05:06AM (#20112802)
but in Finder you can use "/" in filenames, and can't use ":". They got swapped if you look on the file from Terminal.
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Re:macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including ... by gsnedders on Friday June 07, 2019 @09:30AM (#20124260)
Pretty sure HFS doesn't actually store any directory separator. A directory, after all, is just another file, each one containing its own children. Classic Mac OS used ":" when it needed to use something as a path separator.
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