Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file extension separator?

Re:Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file exte... by cafard on Friday August 29, 2014 @07:44AM (#8242082)

I don't know why. VMS also used it to indicate the revision number of a file, as I recall--demo.c.1, demo.c.2 ...--but it has been a while.

Years ago I worked with Data General minis. The 16-bit ones ran the operating system RDOS (real-time disk operating system), the 32-bit ones AOS/VS (advanced operating system with virtual storage. All used the '.' to mark of stem from extension, but all also had a file type associated in the directory. This meant, among other things, the the assembler would balk at processing something called urgent.asm if the directory showed that it was a generic file. That was baffling the first time you encountered it.

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Re:Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file exte... by mveety on Friday August 29, 2014 @09:37AM (#8242397)

VMS also used the semicolon to do version information if you're interfacing with DCL or DECWindows (or NFS I think too). The dot was also used as the directory separator. In VMS land your path would look something like (in the case of my login.com): DSA0:[USERS.MVEETY]LOGIN.COM;5

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Re:Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file exte... by productionQA on Friday August 29, 2014 @03:35PM (#8244180)

My company still uses VMS today. This:

DSA0:[USERS.MVEETY]LOGIN.COM;5

Looks all too familiar to me :-/ I even still have to write some DCL from time to time!

I swear we are going to be the last one's off this system.

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Re:Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file exte... by atsaloli on Friday August 29, 2014 @07:48PM (#8245051)

VMS isn't dead yet.

HP just licensed VMS to vmssoftware.com:

http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/faq.pdf

Roadmap: http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/RM/VMS_Software...

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