When did Windows start accepting forward slash as a path separator?

[Grant Edwards]

In article <slrnbn74ch.s2.bignose-hates-spam at rose.localdomain.fake>, Ben Finney wrote:

>> But now, among a small group of cognoscenti, it is a truism that this is a
>> myth, and that Windows will allow you to use either the forward or the
>> backward slash as a pathname separator.
> 
> I highly doubt it, since the forward slash (or just "slash") is the
> conventional Windows command-line option indicator,

That was configurable back in the DOS days.  There was a "well-known" byte in
system RAM that contained the "switch" character.  IIRC, DOS even shipped
with a utility to change that value.

> analogous to the hyphen on Unix.  To accept it as the start of a filename
> would break zillions of existing systems, for no appreciable benefit to
> Microsoft.

Forward slashes always worked fine for me.

> Python automagically determines the path component separator, os.sep,
> and uses it for most file path transformations to and from the internal
> language's '/'.
> 
>     <http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.1/lib/os-path.html#l2h-1552>
> 
> Is this perhaps what gives you the impression?

Forward slashes work in C as well.

-- 
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