I think neither Windows nor UNIX have a better way of handling command-line arguments; they both have problems (although I think Windows has some additional pro

I think neither Windows nor UNIX have a better way of handling command-line arguments; they both have problems (although I think Windows has some additional problems, even that you did not mention). I have a different way in my idea of operating systems: One of the forks of a file specifies the type of the initial message that it expects, and the command shell will read this to figure out the types, so that effectively programs have types. This initial message also includes capabilities. This is better than needing to convert everything to/from text and then making a mess (e.g. needing quotation, unexpectedly interpreting file names as switches (even if they are quoted), needing an extra delimiter if the text starts with a minus sign which must then be parsed from the program too, the "crazy behavior" you mention with "cp *", etc). (Also, my operating system design does not actually have file names nor directory structures.) (I also think that Unicode is no good, but that is a different issue.)