<story><title>The weird world of Windows file paths</title><url>https://www.fileside.app/blog/2023-03-17_windows-file-paths/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>softfalcon</author><text>After years of working exclusively on Windows, I took a job that required me to build file management, except now, on macOS and Linux (along with Windows).&lt;p&gt;All I can say is, this article is the tip of the ice berg on Windows I&amp;#x2F;O weirdness. You really don&amp;#x27;t realize how strange it is until you are actively comparing it to an equivalent implementation on the two other competing operating systems day-to-day.&lt;p&gt;Each of them has their quirks, but I think Windows takes the cake for &amp;quot;out there&amp;quot; hacks you can do to get things running. I sometimes like to ponder what the business case behind all of them was, then I Google it and find the real reasons are wilder than most ideas I can imagine.&lt;p&gt;Fun stuff!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fsckboy</author><text>&amp;quot;get-a-byte, get-a-byte, get-a-byte, byte, byte&amp;quot; - Dave Cutler &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;retrocomputing.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;14150&amp;#x2F;how-should-we-interpret-dave-cutlers-criticism-of-unix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;retrocomputing.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;14150&amp;#x2F;how...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Windows I&amp;#x2F;O weirdness. You really don&amp;#x27;t realize how strange it is until you&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;can I get a wut... WUT?&amp;quot; - Developers, Developers, Developers&lt;p&gt;====&lt;p&gt;it&amp;#x27;s just hard for people today to understand what a revolution stdin and stdout was, full 8 bit but sticking with ASCII as much as possible. There was nothing about it that limited Unices from having whatever performant I&amp;#x2F;O underneath, but it gave programmers at the terminal the ability to get a lot done right from the command line.&lt;p&gt;The web itself is an extension of stdin and stdout, and the subsequent encrusting of simple HTTP&amp;#x2F;HTML&amp;#x2F;&lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt; standards with layer upon layer of goop that calls for binary blobs can be seen as the invasion of Cutlerian-like mentalities. It&amp;#x27;s sad that linux so successfully took over that all the people who we were happy to let use IIS and ASP and  ActiveX had to come over to this side with their ideas. No idea of which is bad, but which together are incoherent.&lt;p&gt;client server FTW, bring it back</text></comment>
<story><title>The weird world of Windows file paths</title><url>https://www.fileside.app/blog/2023-03-17_windows-file-paths/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>softfalcon</author><text>After years of working exclusively on Windows, I took a job that required me to build file management, except now, on macOS and Linux (along with Windows).&lt;p&gt;All I can say is, this article is the tip of the ice berg on Windows I&amp;#x2F;O weirdness. You really don&amp;#x27;t realize how strange it is until you are actively comparing it to an equivalent implementation on the two other competing operating systems day-to-day.&lt;p&gt;Each of them has their quirks, but I think Windows takes the cake for &amp;quot;out there&amp;quot; hacks you can do to get things running. I sometimes like to ponder what the business case behind all of them was, then I Google it and find the real reasons are wilder than most ideas I can imagine.&lt;p&gt;Fun stuff!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rightbyte</author><text>&amp;gt; All I can say is, this article is the tip of the ice berg on Windows I&amp;#x2F;O weirdness. You really don&amp;#x27;t realize how strange it is until&lt;p&gt;In one way it is beautiful. &amp;quot;Laid cards lies&amp;quot;, you know. Don&amp;#x27;t mess with the user for your conception of Agile Clean Extreme Code (tm). Each stupid design decision is forever.&lt;p&gt;Windows .bat files win the awfulness and quirkyness contest with sh with a razor thin margin. And both are awesome.</text></comment>