ty%CCVAX%Nosc@sri-unix.UUCP (01/08/84)
Upon learning about the swithchar=-, I immediately made the change and have been enjoying the change until I tried to RESTORE my harddisk. I seems that when you change the switchar that the path names embedded into each file at BACKUP time are separated by '/'. The problem I have encountered with this is that you can no longer RESTORE files from the floppy disk. I have no problem using BACKUP/RESTORE when I do not use switchar, but right now I am unable to restore my hard disk since I BACKUP'ed it with switchar=-. Anyone have experience with this? Would appreciate any info on this. Thanks in advance. ty@NOSC
BRACKENRIDGE%USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP (01/08/84)
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>
I suppose it might be instructive for all concerned to reprint Gordon
Letvin's warnings about switchar from last July's issue of Info-IBMPC:
Date: 22 Jul 83 12:03:53-PDT (Fri)
To: info-ibmpc @ Usc-Isib
From: microsoft!gordonl @ UW-Beaver
Subject: SWITCHAR Warning
Recent articles have described the SWITCHAR facility in MSDOS 2.0.
This changes the path character from "\" to "/" and the switch
character from "/" to "-".
Please be warned that this feature is NOT DOCUMENTED and, in fact,
(often) DOES NOT WORK. Yes, the OS and COMMAND.COM will correctly use
the new characters, but other utilities may become confused. For
example, I used SWITCHAR on my own PC, then did a full dump a few days
later. After reformatting my hard disk I discovered that a dump taken
with SWITCHAR in effect cannot be read.
In short, if it's undocumented, use at your own risk, and be aware
that you may encounter totally unexpected problems.
gordon letwin
microsoft
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-------grogers@uiuccsb.UUCP (01/17/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-1520300:uiuccsb:5100008:000:173 uiuccsb!grogers Jan 14 21:59:00 1984 Since the "-" character is a valid filename character then using "switchar=-" will cause any files with the "-" in the name to become unreadable. ...uiucdcs!grogers