Why is the DOS path character "\"?

Re:Why is the DOS path character "\"? by yread on Monday March 19, 2012 @11:52AM (#3724462)

You could still do that with copy in MS-DOS, I have a feeling my mom still does it since she has a printer on parallel port. So if she wants to print a textfile it's just

     copy file.txt LPT1

she can also print multiple files or results of print to file using the /b switch (binary) ignoring EOF

That also explains why you shouldn't use LPT1 as file name - it was a special name that meant first parallel port. I remember seeing a ridiculing thread about it on HN some time ago

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Re:Why is the DOS path character "\"? by csamuel on Monday March 19, 2012 @03:15PM (#3725652)

"And that is why, in 2009, when developing in Microsoft .NET 3.5 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0 on a Windows 7 system, you cannot include /com\d(\..)?, /lpt\d(\..)?, /con(\..)?, /aux(\..)?, /prn(\..)?, or /nul(\..)? in any of your routes."

Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=655397

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Re:Why is the DOS path character "\"? by rhizome on Monday March 19, 2012 @07:25PM (#3726904)

I'm pretty sure you could still do this up until at least Win2k+ if your mapped printer had a port associated.

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Re:Why is the DOS path character "\"? by Natsu on Tuesday March 20, 2012 @06:58AM (#3728658)

It still works on Windows 7. Sadly, I know that offhand due to having to deal with some weird legacy stuff from our corporate HQ.

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