Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Keith Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: "C's Biggest Mistake" Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2018 18:58:27 -0700 Organization: None to speak of Lines: 41 Message-ID: References: <9c7013a2-17bd-4f94-a378-1c45151d0d45@googlegroups.com> <6zpxC.75432$bz1.69868@fx01.iad> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="92a2d9eeb4da592746ec8273520d8182"; logging-data="24573"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19gzezKl2SP/VJLAdUPBWqn" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:mG6vMZmpVPvhAxmFjHtj5s1/yV8= sha1:LWbrRZpK0GroXkE4+bDEZ2tRVhU= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:128984 Tim Rentsch writes: > Robert Wessel writes: >> On Thu, 05 Apr 2018 13:31:46 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) >> wrote: >>> bartc writes: >>>> * Try out this comment: // path c:\dir\ >>>> and the next line is ignored. >>> >>> That's a microsoft made a really stupid choice >>> for path separators. >> >> That's really blaming the victim. Whatever MS's faults may be, are >> you seriously going to argue that their filename syntax should have >> had compatibility with C's line continuation syntax as a prime >> concern? Back in 1983? > > IMO Microsoft deserves at least part of the blame, for two > reasons: one, it isn't just C, but also for example most unix > shells; and two, Microsoft has a history of deliberate > incompatibilities (and even known to be technically inferior > ones) introduced purely for business reasons. If I thought it > was an honest mistake I might be willing to let them off the > hook. Judging from their history though an honest mistake seems > unlikely. If I recall correctly, early versions of MS-DOS didn't have directories, but did use '/' to introduce command-line options (as Unix commonly uses '-'), something it shared with other operating systems (including VMS, but I don't know whether there's a connection there). When directory support was added, using '/' both to introduce command-line options and as a directory delimiter would have been unreasonably confusing. In that context, using '\' as a directory delimiter was probably a reasonable decision. By the time MS-DOS/Windows, Unix, and C started interacting with each other, it was too late to make them behave consistently. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc. "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this." -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"