From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: andreww591@gmail.com (Andrew Warkentin) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:49:54 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Dash options In-Reply-To: References: <201711280551.vAS5pDZt014974@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Message-ID: On 11/27/17, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 27 Nov 2017, Jon Steinhart wrote: > >> Does anybody know the history of dash options? Were they a UNIX thing >> or did UNIX borrow them from something earlier? > > An equivalent question would be why "/" was chosen as the directory > separator, as it was commonly used for flags. > Multics had dash options, so that's presumably where Unix got them from. I believe slash options were mostly a DEC thing that DOS and its successors borrowed (I think they originated in TOPS-10). I don't think there was any widespread syntax for options when the first versions of Unix were written, and slash and dash options weren't the only syntaxes used (e.g. JCL-ish key=value options were used on some systems). The thing that I wonder about was why ">" wasn't used as the directory separator when paths were added to Unix, since that's what Multics used.