alt Hacker NewsJust a few lines below:
"Over time, programs were written with MS-DOS as their primary target, and they started to realize that they could use environment variables as a way to store configuration data. In the ensuing chaos of the marketplace, two environment variables emerged as the front-runners for specifying where temporary files should go: TEMP and TMP."
And before that there are a few paragraphs describing the migration of applications from i8080/Z80 based CP/M towards x86 based DOS via mechanical translation.
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rendaw • today at 12:50 PM
I was curious seeing this thread, and I just looked and don't get it either. AFAICT the CP/M references could have been entirely omitted and nothing in the narrative about TMP and TEMP would change.
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Sounds like the short answer is "because there was no standard for the variable set by MS-DOS from the get go".
The background is that the issue hadn't existed in CP/M because there hadn't been environment variables. Perhaps if the issue had already been seen in CP/M, the developers of MS-DOS might have defined a standard variable to avoid it. Maybe. Other than that it doesn't seem to have much to do with CP/M specifically.