Nicholas Bodley skribis:

>
> Yes, CP/M had directories, and iirc, they were nestable as well.
> Gary Kildall, its author, was a computer person.

This is way off-topic, and this will be my only reply.

I don't think CP/M directories were nestable. This was twenty-five
years ago when very few microcomputers had hard drives. Most
home computers had dual floppy disks, and nested directories
were hardly necessary.

Just going on my memory, Seattle Computer Products was the
first company to adapt the 8088, Intel's 16-bit microprocessor
to run on the S-100 bus. (CP/M was the dominant operating
system for the 8-bit 8080 and Z-80 systems.)

Digital Research, Kildall's company, promised to make a version
of CP/M available for the 8088, but they kept dragging their feet.
Seattle Computer Products had hardware ready to ship, but no
operating system. So finally they hired an independent CP/M
guru to put together a system for them. It was pretty much a clone
of CP/M.

Microsoft bought this from Seattle Computer Products and called
it MS-DOS Version 1. They quickly added numerous enhancements
including nested directories. Shortly thereafter, IBM introduced their
PC. They licensed MS-DOS 2.0 from Microsoft and called it PC-DOS.
About that time, Digital Research finally came out with CP/M-86,
but when you bought an IBM PC you could have PC-DOS for free or
pay an extra $40 for CP/M-86. Almost everyone picked PC-DOS,
and CP/M-86 went down the tubes.

--Ph. D.