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Friday, September 8th, 2023

    Time Event
    5:28p
    Filesystem Path Formats
    I was curious where the RISC OS `device.path.leads.to.file` style path format came from.
    Apparently it came from the classic IBM OSes.
    Multics   >device>path>leads>to>file.ext
    Unix      /device/path/leads/to/file.ext
    MIT ITS   device:path;leads;to;file ext     extension is separate from filename
    Amiga     device:path/leads/to/ext.file     extension comes first
    CP/M      device:\path\leads\to\file.ext
    DOS       device:\path\leads\to\file.ext    yes, MS "borrowed" a lot from CP/M
    MacOS     device:path:leads:to:file.txt     System 1 to Mac OS9
    VMS       device:[path.leads.to]file.ext    also allows ext.gen - versioning
    TOPS-20   device:<path.leads.to>file.ext    also allows ext.gen - versioning
    TENEX     device:<path.leads.to>file.ext
    IBM zOS   device.path.leads.to.file.ext
    RISC OS   device.path.leads.to.file         extension is separate from filename
                                                DOS files .ext is renamed to /ext
                                                while ROS files get ,HEXCODE suffix
                                                when transferred to DOS or over
                                                network, without MIME types.
    

    Note that MIT ITS/VMS/TOPS-20/zOS/RISC OS allow several named root dirs for a device.
    I.e. single device could have several filesystems.

    Typically they are specified as DEVICE$FILESYSTEM

    So basically, the `.` format comes from IBM. Unsure if the `.` in C based language was also based on it.

    NOTE: MIT ITS apparently too allowed referencing separate partitions of the device
    https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/NITS.md
    :MIDAS DSK0:.;NITS BIN_SYSTEM; ITS


    Here `:.;` I think stands for the default partition. On RISC OS that would be :$.

    Current Mood: amused

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