28 Oct
2019
28 Oct
'19
6 p.m.
On 27 Oct 2019 21:11 -0400, from usotsuki(a)buric.co (Steve Nickolas):
On Sun, 27 Oct 2019, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
If there was such a relationship, it would probably make more sense
for the command prompt termination character to be ":", not ">",
as
DOS labelled devices as [whatever]: (like "A:" or "NUL:"). So I agree
with Steve; I imagine it's unrelated. They just had to use _something_
as a default to indicate that the computer is waiting for a command,
and ">" is as good a character as any.
In either case, since MS-DOS/PC-DOS did what CP/M already did in that
regard, the question would probably need to be posed to Kildall where
he got it from. Unless Kildall wrote it down, getting a first hand
account on the reasoning behind that particular choice would be...
nontrivial.
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se
“The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person
is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor)
Is there any relation between Multics' use
of ">" as a directory
separator and MS-DOS's default use of ">" at the end of the command
prompt?
I can't imagine there's any such connection. MS-DOS got it from CP/M, which
didn't even have the concept of subdirectories until after MS-DOS did.