Unix Vs. DOS

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <551 at caslon.cs.arizona.edu> musa at cs.arizona.edu (Musa J. Jafar) writes:

>Hello there. I am reading about the
>unix file system and the dos file system(sort of speak)
>Unix is a real Hierarchy while DOS is not
>This is what I understood from my readings.
>But DOS looks like a hierarchy.
>questions:
>Why DOS is not real?

I suspect that the author meant that under DOS, multiple drives or
partitioned drives appear to be seperate units identified by their
drive letters, where in unix all filesystems are mounted below a
single root directory, and even the raw disk partitions and other
devices appear in the file system hierarchy (usually /dev/devicename).
Dos versions that support the "join" command can hide most of this
and appear more like a hierarchy.

>What is the advantage of UNIX over DOS in a single user Env.
>     other than you have more options under Unix (but you pay for them)

DOS has a serious problem with its 640K memory limitation but there are
many work-arounds and it has the advantage of cheap readily available
software for almost any application, and with add-ons you can get
multi-tasking.  Unix has always had more of a toolbox approach which
you will either love or hate, depending on whether you think about
computers in terms of programming them to do what you want.

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us