Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Tuesday 29 December 2009 18:21:01 John R Pierce wrote: >> Marko Vojinovic wrote: >>> You mean new to the concept of files and directories? This is not >>> Linux-only. The . and .. existed even in MS-DOS back in the 80's. >> having an actual . and .. file in a directory is a distinctly Unix >> practice. > > I was not trying to say that . and .. were *invented* in MS-DOS. I was just > commenting that it is not Linux-specific (or Unix-specific). The point was that > a newbie would encounter . and .. equally well on both Linux and Windows > systems. The only difference is that Windows does not encourage the use of a > terminal, unlike Linux. Therefore, the fact that someone is confused by the > existence of . in some directory is mainly the fault of GUI-for-everything > philosophy of Windows. MS-DOS 2.0 added subdirectories, I/O redirection, pipes, filters and a few other features copied from Unix. Of course they were mere shadows of the actual Unix features and lacked most of the standard capabilities, but it was a step in the right direction. It is one of the few steps in that direction Microsoft ever took. Bob McConnell N2SPP