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To: tuhs@tuhs.org
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 27 Oct 2019 16:31:28 -0400."
 <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Comments: In-reply-to Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu>
 message dated "Sun, 27 Oct 2019 16:31:28 -0400."
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Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2019 13:46:21 -0700
Message-Id: <20191027204628.7EFFE156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] UNIX Backslash History
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On Sun, 27 Oct 2019 16:31:28 -0400 Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wr=
ote:
> > What is the special meaning of using / as directory partition in UNIX?=
 And =

> \ as  the escape character.
>
> \ came from Multics. The first day Multics ran at Bell Labs Bob Morris
> famously typed backslash-newline at the login prompt and crashed the
> system.
>
> Multics had a hierarchical file system, too, but I don't recall how
> pathnames were punctuated.

=46rom what I read:

>dir1>dir2>file1	-- absolute: /dir1/di2/file1
file1			-- relative: if >dir1>dir2 is the working dir
<file2			-- relative: ../file2 =3D=3D >dir1>file2
<dir3>file4		-- ../dir3/file3
<<dir4>file5		-- ../../dir4/file5 =3D=3D >dir4>file5

<< is more compact thant ../.. and I like the vertical symmetry of < and >=
!