From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 26 07:19:54 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA07455 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 26 Sep 1996 07:19:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (gatekeeper.barcode.co.il [192.116.93.17]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA07401; Thu, 26 Sep 1996 07:19:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nadav@localhost) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (8.7.5/8.6.12) id QAA09731; Thu, 26 Sep 1996 16:19:07 +0200 (IST) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 16:19:07 +0200 (IST) From: Nadav Eiron To: Larry Dolinar cc: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org, Jeremy Sigmon , "Randall D. DuCharme" , questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: MS-DOS text files in UNIX In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 26 Sep 1996, Larry Dolinar wrote: > | From: Anthony Hill > > | On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, hmmm wrote: > | > | > apple/mac uses CR > | > dos/win uses LF/CR > | > unixes use LF > | > > | > why didn't unix choose CR as the standard EOL? > | > (at least we'd be left w/only 2 standards) > | > what a mess of such a simple stupid thing! > | > | Since UNIX precedes these other OS's by about 15 years, I would have > | thought if Microsoft/Apple had any interest in standards they would > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > What in the world are you thinking: Mr. Gates (et al) interested in > standards? > > | have followed UNIX's lead. (bit like using \ in dos instead of UNIX's /) > | > > I'll drink to that.... > I know that's not popular around here, but I guess everybody deserves justice. Both those differences between DOS and UNIX stem from DOS's roots in CP/M. Gates had nothing to do with that. CP/M used the CR/LF convention, and the / for switches to commands. It didn't use the \ for anything because it didn't have a directory structure. DOS 1.x didn't have a directory structure either (it had just a single root directory - would you believe that???) and used the / for command switches, just like CP/M. When MS moved to 2.0, and added hierarchial directories, the / was already taken, so they used the \. I guess that Digital Research (who developed CP/M) are to blame for those two bits. Gates only copied from them (as he usually does). Nadav