The nonorthogonality of `/'

[Brandon S. Allbery]

>...................................................  No doubt some guru will
> suggest a clean way round the obvious problem with "/" (but the name of the
> root directory is already anomalous, and a counterexample to the c&sf-ness
> of the file system).
> 
> 	-- Andy Walker, Maths Dept, Nottingham Univ
> 		anw at UK.AC.Nott.Maths

*** REPLACE THIS POLICE BOX WITH YOUR TARDIS ***

So ``/'' is non-orthogonal.  (I am about to get TOPS-[12]0/T[W]ENEX users upset
at me... flames to PS:<NULL>)  I've seen orthogonal -- is PS:<ROOT> an improve-
ment?  Worse yet, the easiest way to orthogonalize Unix is:

	/	-> (empty)	OR /
	/tmp	-> tmp		OR /tmp
	.	-> .		OR /.		(yuck)
	foo	-> ./foo	OR /./foo	(double ")
	/tmp/a	-> tmp/a	OR /tmp/a
	foo/bar	-> ./foo/bar	OR /./foo/bar

I don't like either -- <ROOT> is cleaner.  (Maybe we should adopt TOPS-20
filenames MINUS GENERATION-RETENTION-COUNT et cetera...?)
-- 
	``Youth, you are guilty of muddy thinking.''

	Mentor

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