70
votes
When was the term ‘directory’ replaced by ‘folder’?
Directory is a filesystem concept. Folder is a user-level concept.
From its beginning in the 1980s, the Macintosh GUI (and possibly other GUIs before it) only talked about "folders" and ...
- 2,038
64
votes
Accepted
Who invented file extensions in file names?
The MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), demonstrated in 1961, had two "names" for each file, with the second telling CTSS how to process the file. This had the function of a filename ...
- 12.4k
56
votes
Who invented file extensions in file names?
The PDP-6 multiprogramming monitor, an early operating system first delivered in 1964, used the term "filename extension" for the second name attached to a file, usually indicating the type. ...
- 6,118
54
votes
What exactly did the "UNFORMAT" MS-DOS command do?
If you format a drive with quick format option (FORMAT /Q), it only clears the root directory and FAT area, but before doing so, the format command stores them in unused area of the disk. This is ...
- 28.3k
51
votes
Accepted
Origin of the 8.3 file names scheme
It was because the fairly common 6.3 scheme of the time was considered too small :-)
Seriously: 8.3 wasn't a particularly onerous restriction at the time. Many PDP-11 operating systems had a 6 ...
- 33.5k
44
votes
Filesystems with versioning
FILES-11 on DEC minicomputers was a versioned file system -- RSX-11M, IAS (on PDP-11), VMS (on VAX, Alpha).
Version numbers are very user-visible; they are part of the syntax for specifying a file. ...
- 33.5k
42
votes
When was the term ‘directory’ replaced by ‘folder’?
TL;DR:
No, 'Directories' were never replaced by 'Folders'. They are the same.
The names just represent different views:
Directory is the data structure holding information about files (and other ...
- 213k
41
votes
Who invented file extensions in file names?
In addition to Walter's spot on answer about the combined use of extensions and delimiting them by a dot and John's about the CTSS (*1) as origin for user defined types, it might be worth to note that ...
- 213k
39
votes
Accepted
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
Colon was inherited from SOS for the Apple III
Unlike one may assume, MacOS (1984/01) did not inherited the colon (:) from Lisa OS (1983/01), which used a hyphen (-) as path separator, but from Apple ...
- 213k
38
votes
Accepted
What was the point of Apple Pascal having its own file system?
UCSD Pascal was a product of UCSD - The University of California at San Diego. It was not a product of Apple.
UCSD Pascal was available on a number of machines, including the PDP-11, TI99/4, the BBC ...
- 8,011
38
votes
Accepted
Why was the DOS clock device renamed from CLOCK into CLOCK$?
Quick partial answer:
CON, LST, PRN and AUX (*1) are names inherited from CP/M, either direct form its BIOS or CP/M's main file handling utility PIP (*2). NUL was add with DOS.
DOS 1.x added ...
- 213k
35
votes
Accepted
Where was the DOS cdd utility from?
I remember CDD as a 4DOS command, which would have been available in the Norton Utilities as NDOS. JP Software’s other shells also implement CDD, so 4OS2 and 4NT users would probably recognise it too.
...
- 118k
34
votes
How can I recover the contents from an Amiga HDD using modern Linux?
You should be able to use the Amiga hard drive directly on your Linux computer (provided it still has IDE support).
Linux also understands AFFS (Amiga Fast File systems), at least once AFFS support ...
- 33k
34
votes
Origin of the 8.3 file names scheme
[Part of what is described here can be found on Herb Johnson's great site about CP/M history, the other is experience of 30+ years in mainframe procedure]
CP/M was, Dave explains, heavily influenced ...
- 213k
32
votes
Accepted
Why does the single dot entry exist in file systems?
It simply makes sense to have a symbol that stands for the current directory. It makes sense for the symbol to be easy to type and to stand out from ordinary directory names. Dot is a pretty good ...
- 6,118
32
votes
Accepted
When did files start to be dated?
CTSS, a timesharing system for the IBM 7090, was putting dates on files as early as 1962.
Timestamps is another story.
Wikipedia
- 6,118
31
votes
How did the /dev file system work in early Unix?
In 1986 (and for a few years after that still), /dev wasn’t handled by a special file system. It was generally a directory on the root file system, and its contents were largely static: a series of ...
- 118k
31
votes
Do any FAT8 filesystem images survive?
I think I've actually found a FAT8 disk image: Toshiba T100 Personal Computer T-DISK BASIC (Version 1.0) (1982)
Why I think it is FAT8:
Starting near offset 0xc530, there are repeated occurrences of ...
- 1,881
30
votes
Why did ScanDisk exist?
There are quite a few differences between the MS-DOS CHKDSK and ScanDisk, beyond the latter’s friendlier interface.
ScanDisk can “repair” cross-linked files, i.e. files which end up pointing (...
- 118k
29
votes
Accepted
Why can MS-DOS not read partitions starting at logical sector 0?
This is a consequence of a buggy overflow check.
Internally, MS-DOS uses logical block addressing to access file systems. Since version 4.0, MS-DOS uses 32 bits for sector addresses in order to ...
- 21.6k
27
votes
When was the term ‘directory’ replaced by ‘folder’?
1984 Mac: They did mean different things
The original file system of the Macintosh was called MFS (Macintosh File System). It was released with the first Macs in 1984. In this file system, "...
- 15.8k
26
votes
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
I think the colon deserves to be considered the original, the one true separator character. All others are mere imitators ;-)
My rationale for this is the seminal paper A General-Purpose File System ...
- 33.5k
26
votes
When was the term ‘directory’ replaced by ‘folder’?
I believe this is a distinction without a difference. As described reasonable well in the Wikipedia article on "directory", folder is more of a way of describing the use of a directory for ...
25
votes
What was the point of Apple Pascal having its own file system?
UCSD Pascal was developed prior to the Apple II, during the 70's in San Diego, using PDP-11 class machines with a 512-byte block disk structure. In the process of porting it to microcomputers, often (...
- 213k
25
votes
Filesystems with versioning
There were quite a few operating systems that had file versioning in the same era as unix.
Many file systems that we are familiar with today just have some components of a file name, such as:
Name....
- 5,597
25
votes
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
The original Macintosh File System did not support directories. But the Mac did support multiple floppy drives from the start, and colon : was used in fairly standard fashion as a drive prefix ...
- 13.5k
25
votes
Why was the DOS clock device renamed from CLOCK into CLOCK$?
As Raffzahn explains, the clock device driver was added in DOS 2.0. CON, AUX, etc. were device names already present in DOS 1.0, some of them even earlier in CP/M; these names couldn’t be changed to ...
- 118k
25
votes
Why does the FAT file system have separate ‘hidden’ and ‘system’ attributes?
The attributes are documented in The MS-DOS Encyclopedia as follows:
The hidden bit (bit 1) is set to 1 to indicate that the entry is to be skipped in normal directory searches — that is, in ...
- 118k
23
votes
Accepted
Slash versus backslash as directory separator – what/who caused this rift?
PC/MS-DOS 1 used the slash (/) as the command line switch indicator (like DEC's RSX11 and DG's RTOS before), so when DOS 2.0 introduced subdirectories, they did need a new one. Backslash (\) came ...
- 213k
23
votes
Where and when did the ".s" suffix for assembly-language source files originate?
I asked Ken Thompson. The s stands for source, because it was the only source at the time.
- 331
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