Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utastro.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!nather From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) Newsgroups: net.micro.pc Subject: switchar=\ disaster Message-ID: <92@utastro.UUCP> Date: Mon, 11-Jun-84 14:09:04 EDT Article-I.D.: utastro.92 Posted: Mon Jun 11 14:09:04 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Jun-84 01:02:34 EDT Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 28 [] It is possible to make PC-DOS look like Unix (superficially, anyway) by putting a command in the config.sys file that says switchar=\ which "pre-empts" the use of the "\" character for DOS switch parameters, and allows the use of the "fall-back" character "/". Thus one can use forward slash characters in pathnames, and not have to remember which computer you are working on while thinking deeply about something else. This works fine except for an ugly side-effect: the "backup" program makes the change gracefully, identifying each dumped file with a pathname made up of directory names separated by "/" characters. The "restore" program, however, insists on having the "\" character between names. If you dump all of your hard-disk files to floppies, you won't be able to restore them without charging the header on EACH AND EVERY FILE from /xxx/yyy/zzz to \xxx\yyy\zzz. If, in the meantime, you have re-formatted your hard disk to minimize the number of fragmented files ... [Guess how I found this out ???] -- Ed Nather {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!nather Astronomy Dept., U. of Texas, Austin