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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