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All wrong. "/" was the options-switch-character in CP/M, which had no sub-directories. DECs and VAXes had nothing to do this decision, because only few humans h
by timonoko 6y ago
All wrong. "/" was the options-switch-character in CP/M, which had no sub-directories. DECs and VAXes had nothing to do this decision, because only few humans had access to such machines. I even remember I had problems adapting to directory trees in MSDOS because files were kinda hidden and lost in a floppy directory.
- tgv 6y agoCP/M had them because of DEC, IIRC. Commands like "DIR" and "TYPE" are also indicative. And "PIP".
- culturedsystems 6y agoCP/M was surely the direct influence. Wikipedia says CP/M was itself influenced by TOPS-10, which I think also used the slash for options, so the ultimate origin may be with DEC.
- simonh 6y agoIt's true that DOS was originally a CP/M clone, but CP/M didn't have a defined standard option switch character, and in fact many command option switches weren't preceded by a switch indicator or differed as to what option switch character was used. If anything + and - were the most common prefixes for an option switch. http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/cpm3-cmd.pdf http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/cpm3-cmd.pdf The article is quite right that the convention of using / for command line switches came from IBM.