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Even worse, there was (and still is) no requirement for a command and its switches to be separated with whitespace. "DIR/W" is the same as "DIR /W". Which wou
by kijin 6y ago
Even worse, there was (and still is) no requirement for a command and its switches to be separated with whitespace.
"DIR/W" is the same as "DIR /W".
Which would have made it impossible to determine whether you want to invoke the command "DIR" in the current directory, or the command "W" in a subdirectory named "DIR".
- bregma 6y agoThe DEC operating systems (eg. RSX with its MCR shell and VMS with its DCL shell) also handled command-line switches this way (eg. PIP/LIST to list files in a directory). Of course, they didn't use unixy paths for directories. A fully-qualified file name would be something like (and it's been decades so if I get it wrong forgive me) DRA0:[SYS.USERS.BREGMA.PROJECT.SOURCES]HELLO.C;1 and anyone who was sane would use logical names in DCL to make things readable.