I’m so old school that I remember .com as a VMS command file long before it was a DOS executable…
I thought we already had a poster named FDISK. Am I confused?
What is this “DOS” of which you speak? 
d&r
[more pedantic than Some Guy] Actually, . means all files containing at least one dot that is neither the first nor last character of the file name. [/more pedantic than Some Guy]
Relatively speaking (about DOS),
. Meant everything, or all (files).
In MS DOS, every file had a “.” because of DOS’s naming convention. :smack:
Entering «DIR .» was the same as just the «DIR» – it listed everything in the directory. :wally
“*.” would list only files & Dir WITHOUT an extention. 
RëD
Very cool new name, Red Matrix 
[More pedantic than Pod] * means “ZERO or more characters”, not “ONE or more characters”. So, . would find ANY file with at least one ‘.’ character in it. Regardless of whether it was the first or last character. Now, whether or not DOS allows said files is another story…
And to test this out, do a DIR on some file you have, such as “RANDOMFILE” (without a file extension. Do some thing such as “DIR RANDOMFILE*”. This will return RANDOMFILE. At least under sane regular expression regimes
All I know is that if you were me in 1993 and you typed in “Delete .” while in DOS on your dad’s computer, and then hit enter, your dad will be very puzzled about what happened to his computer and you will have to pretend to know nothing about it.
I’ve learned a lot since then, I swear.
A username change?
Why was I not informed?
How appropriate, just like the way FDISK.COM became FDISK.EXE in July 1988.
Another note: I believe that it is true to say even though the * wildcard means one or more characters, that DOS (and possibly other OSes) didn’t start looking again after it encounters the wildcard in part of an expression, so you couldn’t search properly for *pie.txt - hoping to find all filenames that END with ‘pie’.
Hm, what about the fella who has his (her?) email address as the username here? That seems iffy as well.
OK, so if the dot com part made it an inappropriate name, why did they specify that fdisk on its own was inappropriate as well?
The world will never know!
-Red
Tootsie Pop
“Tootsie Pop” ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I’d be interested in why FDISK.COM was inappropriate too.
If it was because of confusing a DOS command file with an internet commercial web site, isn’t this just the kind of ignorance we’re supposed to be fighting rather than pandering to?
In fact, didn’t we have this same argument a few years back about a user forced to change their name because people didn’t understand what it meant?
I was disappointed that Tuba asked the former seal clubber to change his name. I always pictured him with camoflage paint and Vick’s Vap-O-Rub on his face.
What?
Oh, yeah? Well, I’m more pendantic than any of…aw, never mind.
Heh, yep. “The world will never know” is a reference
to an old Tootsie Pop commercial (with an owl).
The child asks the Wize Owl: “…how many licks does
it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”
Mr Owl: (Grabs pop and licks) “One,
(licks again) Two,
(licks again) Three…
(bites it) Three.” (hands the stick back)
Anouncer: “The world will never know”
RMX
It is the original IBM 360 operating system. After one or two minor upgrades (and despite the clear superiority of its younger sibling, OS (later MVS, later OS/390, later zOS), it still lurks around the mainframe world as VSE.