Certainly, but you don't have to go as far back as that for an example: just compare the drive letters in Windows to the lack of them in Unix.

It works very well in Lua's favour to stick to just the C library given the desire to use it in embedded computers. However, it's valid to wonder why a basic feature supported by 99% of computers is not available out of the box; you judge things based on what's available now, not the past. I should think the C library would be quite different had it been designed 20 years later.