On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 11:01 PM L A Walsh wrote:
> Bill Gates changed the file-system object separator from '/' to
> '\' so that DOS would look less like CP/M -- a competing micro OS at
> the time that copied the use of '/' from unix. He was trying to avoid
> the impression that he got the idea of using '/' to delineate file
> system hierarchy as there was more concern about lawsuits by some companies
> in "look-alike" interfaces.
"Wrong," said Renner.
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
-- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye
'\' was chosen for the DOS path separator because they wanted to look
*more* like CP/M, which was already using '/' as the command line switch prefix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_%28computing%29#History
Csaba
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