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Comment by simonblack | Hacker News Reader

Because the '/' in MSDOS was already in use as an option-indicator - a carry-over from CP/M

     FORMAT C: /S /U

The option-indicator in UNIX-like systems was the dash/hyphen '-'

     ls -al

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> Because the '/' in MSDOS was already in use as an option-indicator - a carry-over from CP/M

It wasn't a carry-over from CP/M itself. The utilities shipped with CP/M itself didn't use slash as an option character. PIP put options in square brackets.

It was a carry-over from Microsoft's programming tools for CP/M. And, as the article points out, Microsoft appears to have borrowed that syntax from DEC TOPS-10, where it originated

And the article points out it's NOT a carry-over from CP/M.

And I am not sure if their argument holds water. CP/M is clearly influenced by DEC usage [1], and various DEC OS and tools had slashes for tool options as a standard. Those then got carried over to CP/M (e.g. PIP), so that was the standard way to define options everyone CP/M used would have known.

It's really really hard to imagine the usage for slashes as arguments was not a carry over. And for anyone old enough to actually remember the transition from CP/M to MS-DOS (like me), it felt very natural.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

As the article explains, CP/M PIP uses [ ] for options, not /

[Article submitter here]

> a carry-over from CP/M

No, it wasn't, and I posted this correcting someone else on HN sharing this disinformation.

CP/M does not have command switches as standard. There is no standard separator because it didn't support switches. (Some programs did on their own.)

Didn't you RTFA before posting this -- gods, I hate the term -- fake news?

thats why it also works without any spaces

  DIR C:/p/s/w

Doesn't do what you might expect.

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