MS-DOS, HFS, and other file separators

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> writes:

 >> Not many people know this, but at low levels in old Mac OS, they
 >> used ":" as a folder separator in file specifiers.

 Steve> Let us say, "not many average Mac users." Though limiting it
 Steve> to "average XYZ users" leaves the named group open to
 Steve> accusations of all manner of ignorance and stupidity... ;^)

Even in Mac OS X you can still see this -- various applications show
colon-separated file names in the "recently opened files" list.  MS
Word, for example.

 Steve> So, what else have we got out there for file/directory path
 Steve> separators? We've got DEC's "DEVICE:[DIR.SUB]FILE.TXT;1" and
 Steve> uhm... actually, I can't think of the conventions for any
 Steve> others at the moment. Can anybody think of any interesting
 Steve> ones? I can't remember what DomainOS did, but I remember it
 Steve> striking me when I learned of it. Mainframes? RTOSes?

OS/360 didn't have any, because it didn't have directories.  Same for
various other operating systems, like CDC's.  I forgot if Burroughs
had them.

TOPS-20: DEV:<DIR.SUB>FILE.TXT.1 -- and VMS accepts that syntax too,
or at least much of it (. for version separator, certainly).  TOPS-10:
DEV:[nnn,nnn]FILE.TXT (no version) -- RSTS and RSX and DOS ditto
through RSX had octal numbers while RSTS and TOPS were decimal.

	paul