Why we have backslash for DOS and slash for linux and URL?

Question

I use both windows and Linux and often I got confused when I use command lines...

1>MS-DOS use backslash like C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Desktop\

2>Linux use slash like /usr/lib

3>URL seems to use slash like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask

4>C++/C programmer often use backslash as the escape character like \n or \t or \"

Item 1-3 can be confusing plus the effect of item 4. I am wondering why MS-DOS doesn't use (forward) slash just as everything else, and then we can only use the special backslash as the escape character.

The author (or purchaser) of DOS probably wanted to it to look different than the popular operating systems of the time (UNIX). — maerics, Oct 29 '12 at 15:48
For compatibility with DOS 1.0. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash — Magnus Hoff, Oct 29 '12 at 15:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

This has been answered at superuser: https://superuser.com/questions/176388/why-does-windows-use-backslashes-for-paths-and-unix-forward-slashes

Let me quote the gist of it:

MS-DOS 2.0 introduced \ as the directory separator in the early 1980s. The reason / was not used is that MS-DOS 1.0 was already using / to introduce command-line options. It took this usage of / from CP/M, which took it from VMS.

Why we have backslash for DOS and slash for linux and URL?

1 Answers1