RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[Tiit Lankots]

>eventually, in 3rd year i started to use vi and read/hacked
>some of the code -- the horror, the horror ...

mm, i've heard before that vi' source code is <your favorite expletive>.
it (vi) must've made a world of difference back then, tho.
who wrote it, anyway?

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[Stephen Wynne]

Bill Joy wrote vi, of course. And the C-shell. 'Nuff said.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> it (vi) must've made a world of difference back then, tho.
> who wrote it, anyway?

pretty sure joy smashed 'ex' into horton's curses (how aptly
named).  ask any vi fan how ~ was implemented.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[splite]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 12:49:57AM -0700, Stephen Wynne wrote:
> Bill Joy wrote vi, of course. And the C-shell. 'Nuff said.

Him?  He's harmless.  Back in the '70s he was part of the CSRG at Berkeley;
I think he did a little too much LDS.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[David Lukes]

>Him?  He's harmless.  Back in the '70s he was part of the CSRG at Berkeley;
>I think he did a little too much LDS.
>
>
Bill Joy was a Mormon?

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[jmk]

On Thu Oct  2 12:40:56 EDT 2003, splite@purdue.edu wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 12:49:57AM -0700, Stephen Wynne wrote:
> > Bill Joy wrote vi, of course. And the C-shell. 'Nuff said.
>
> Him?  He's harmless.  Back in the '70s he was part of the CSRG at Berkeley;
> I think he did a little too much LDS.

When Joy announced last month that he was leaving Sun, the following
2 articles from The Register lovefest give you an idea of how he is
regarded, and what he gets credit for, in some circles (but not by anyone
I know).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32732.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32780.html

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[ron minnich]

Joy was one of the first Rock Star OS guys. At 1982 or so Usenix they were
handing out 'The Joy of Unix' badges.

Now it's Linus. Wonder who's next?

ron

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

what joy?  the tape copier?

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> Bill Joy was a Mormon?

s/rm/r/

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[David Presotto]

Bill was/is many things but moron is not one of them.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boydomatic]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 05:06:54PM -0400, David Presotto wrote:
> Bill was/is many things but moron is not one of them.

anyone who goes around unarmed is a moron

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

     What happened is that Ken Thompson came to Berkeley and
     brought this broken Pascal system, and we got this summer job
     to fix it. While we were fixing it, we got frustrated with the editor
     we were using which was named ed. ed is certainly frustrating.

err yes, i remember doing assignments in 'pi' and hacking in procedures
(etc ...) that were basically threads.  not all my work.  strangely enough
one of the guys who did a lot of the work was killed in 9/11.

another one of those (somewhat less annoying) australians.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> Joy was one of the first Rock Star OS guys. At 1982 or so Usenix they were
> handing out 'The Joy of Unix' badges.

ahh yes, i remember a usenix (in SFO) where i could here this voice
flaming this guy to death.  it was honeyman -- we had a fun time.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> Bill was/is many things but moron is not one of them.

perhaps, but when you write a 'C shell' and get the mc carthy (sp?)
and/or ops 'round the wrong way, well ...

give me duff's rc.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> anyone who goes around unarmed is a moron

since when did boyd or his 'boydomatic' go around armed?

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd, rounin]

> anyone who goes around unarmed is a moron

anyone who goes around armed is a moron, or leaves their weapons
lying around is a moron.  this is not virginia, toto.

the 'cooling off period here' is _at least_ a year, after belonging
to a range, passing a test (in french), 6 month wait, 3 month application
period and any firearm must be kept in a safe; mine has a key/token
and a code.

not only is it the the LAW, it's not a bad idea.

btw: part of the 3 months is checking around the psych hospitals
to verify that you've spent no time in one.

bbtw.  this is way OT, but you _do not_ fuck around with firearms.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[kim kubik]

rminnich@lanl.gov (ron minnich) wrote in message 

> Joy was one of the first Rock Star OS guys. At 1982 or so Usenix they were 
> handing out 'The Joy of Unix' badges. 
> 
 my admittedly weak memory is that the badges read
'The Joy of SUN', being handed out at to announce
 that he had joined the new company.

 Lore around this time as well was that HP had given
Joy a large sum of cash to port Unix to a 32-bit
microprocessor they had developed, the thing sat in
a chunk of solid gold the size of a kitchen tile,
necessary as a heat sink. A workstation based on it
may have actually shipped a couple of units.

 Anyhow, all this supposedly kept him from getting back 
across the Bay to UCB to complete his PhD.

 - k

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

gold sounds bad.  copper or silver are better heat conductors, right?

but the gold may have been there for other purposes ...

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[andrey mirtchovski]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, kim kubik wrote:

>  Lore around this time as well was that HP had given
> Joy a large sum of cash to port Unix to a 32-bit
> microprocessor they had developed, the thing sat in
> a chunk of solid gold the size of a kitchen tile,
> necessary as a heat sink. A workstation based on it
> may have actually shipped a couple of units.
>

Bulgaria, who was destined by its government to become the microelectronics
technology center of the Warsaw Pact countries, also used gold as the
connectors of the circuit boards it made. Reverse engineered Apple IIs...

I don't know if that was common practice in the west at the time, maybe 20
years earlier :)

Part of our high-school 'hands-on' education involved electronics. In grade
6 and 7 part of the curriculum involved learning how to use a soldering iron
and taking the gold (very gently) off the old circuit boards and into a cup...

andrey

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[david presotto]

gold was very common as pad wires.  AT&T used to require gold (or at least
gold plating)
on all board contacts.

A gold stratum for a chip would have been odd, not sure what it would be
good for.

Bill could have finished his thesis while he was at UCB if he had a mind to.
He
didn't.  Sun was pretty much after he'ld given up on it.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[david presotto]

Looked at the original message and saw that it said gold hat sink.   There
were a lot of gold 'plated' heat sinks floating around (still are some).
Don't
believe I ever saw any that were solid gold.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[Dan Cross]

> Looked at the original message and saw that it said gold hat sink.   There
> were a lot of gold 'plated' heat sinks floating around (still are some).
> Don't believe I ever saw any that were solid gold.

I don't know about you, but if *I* saw a solid gold heat sink, I'd
buy it, take it home, melt it down, and sell it at a bank, and then
replace it with something made out of some other metal.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[Dan Cross]

> I don't know about you, but if *I* saw a solid gold heat sink, I'd
> buy it, take it home, melt it down, and sell it at a bank, and then
> replace it with something made out of some other metal.

Err, make that STEAL it.  I guess my fundamentally honest nature led
to a Freudian slip.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[David Presotto]

Maybe that's why I never saw them; Dan has a pile of gold bullion in his
closet.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[ron minnich]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Dan Cross wrote:

> I don't know about you, but if *I* saw a solid gold heat sink, I'd
> buy it, take it home, melt it down, and sell it at a bank, and then
> replace it with something made out of some other metal.

I worked at HP as in intern in the good old (gold) days when many HP divs
made their own boards. There was a room in it with lotsa gold bars for the
boards.

I still have a PC board with a huge HP logo on it from those days.

ron

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> I don't know about you, but if *I* saw a solid gold heat sink, I'd
> buy it, take it home, melt it down, and sell it at a bank, and then
> replace it with something made out of some other metal.

- Dan "Jack Handy" Cross

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[a]

and on-the-job training as an admin, was vi. for years that's all i
ever used. then one day at work i had to use ed on a system with 
something busted with the console. an older unix type had to show
me where to start, but learning the regexp stuff was amaxing. i
still used vi regularly, but the stuff i learned in ed made me much
more productive there. and that's saying nothing of the tons of
other places the regexp stuff shows up.

a friend of mine is currently in school for a CS degree. they
taught him vi and emacs, but without any of the regexp stuff. i
tried to get him to learn ed, but he couldn't understand why you'd
want to. i guess it'll take until he's got nothing else to understand.
ア

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[rog]

> the stuff i learned in ed made me much
> more productive there. and that's saying nothing of the tons of
> other places the regexp stuff shows up.

i'd have grave difficulty surviving without the sam command
language...

(there are a couple of annoying little things i still haven't
worked out a good way of doing though)

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[rob pike, esq.]

> (there are a couple of annoying little things i still haven't
> worked out a good way of doing though)

if they're annoying, don't do them.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

oh yeah pad wires, sure.  otherwise heavy, thick ... :)

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

trouble with 'pure' [24 carat] gold is that it's very maleable, a bit too much.

it's early so '24 carat' maybe totally bogus.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

LOL.  i'm with you captain, ...

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

control-meta-clusterfuck

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

as it says in one of the sam papers:

   few people use the command language

nor did i, but now i do, a lot.

with 'perfect undo', so simply implemented, you can either:

     - smash the file(s)
     - build up a meta command

if it doan work, just type 'u'.

this is 'rollback'.  buncha times i've thought of:

    do it again [SD]

but i guess i'm just being a lazy mouse-er.

RE: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

    if they're annoying, don't do them.

good call.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[vdharani]

Hi,

I happened to read an article in Fortune magazine. Thought of sharing it to
you:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,490598-1,00.html

Regards
dharani

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[kim kubik]

rminnich@lanl.gov (ron minnich) wrote in message 
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Dan Cross wrote:
> 
 > > I don't know about you, but if *I* saw a solid gold heat sink, I'd
 > > buy it, take it home, melt it down, and sell it at a bank, and then
 > > replace it with something made out of some other metal.

> I worked at HP as in intern in the good old (gold) days when many HP divs 
> made their own boards. There was a room in it with lotsa gold bars for the 
> boards. 

Alright, I checked best I could, it seems to have been a large chunk of
copper (no wonder I don't have any money: "Wow, you'll give me ALL those
pennies for this little handful of gold coins?").  

But I still remember the badges reading, "The Joy of SUN",  part of the 
company's nascant marketing effort. Too bad they can't do anything now.
----------------------------------------------
First some info on the original HP 9000 series and cpu:

www.gaby.de/e9ktxt.htm
www.openpa.net/history.html

and two postings from people with functioning brain cells:
===============================
A little bit of HP 9000 history:
The 500 series, announced 12/1982:
  Deep down inside they ran an OS called SunOS, before Sun Microsystems
existed. On top of that they ran either HP-UX or HP Basic. These were based on
HP's own 32bit 1.um NMOS CPU, it was the first 32bit microprocessor. 1.um might
not sound that much, but the company I worked for at the time had just got
there 5.um technology out of the labs and sent it to production, and we weren't
that far behind the big boys.
  The HP9000 model 520 was a workstation, before the name existed. It had so
many fans in it that if you put one on a trolly it would move around the lab.
  Heat was such a problem on these chips, that the whole of the MB was a
large copper heat sink.
==========================================
Newsgroups: net.works
Date: 1982-12-12
                 HP's SuperDesktop System, the HP9000
Today  in Palo Alto, Hewlett Packard presented a seminar highlighting
Computer  Aided   Engineering  applications  of  its  small  computer
products.   
  The  HP9000  is  obviously  HP's  new  pride and  joy. One  of  the
presentations  had  been  a  glossy  video taped  presentation  which
recounted   some   of   the   history  of  the  9000.  HP's   primary
representative, Mike Radisich of HP Ft. Collins CO (the  home  of the
9000), introduced the video tape.
  The  9000  is described by HP as a real technological breakthrough.   
              The HP processor chips  are  not mounted in ceramic or
plastic casings to be attached  to boards.  Rather, the little (1/4")
chips themselves are mounted  directly  on  the  teflon coated copper
boards.  Using this  technique,  the 9000 boards pack a great deal of
power into a small area.   For  example,  the  memory  boards support
256KB of  memory  in  an  area of approximately 30 square inches.  In
that  area  are mounted, 16  memory  chips  as  well  as  some  other
interface and integrity support chips.  The  copper substratum of the
boards is required to help dissipate heat.

Re: [9fans] Newbie: life without rio

[boyd]

not the 9000, please ...

[9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> > (there are a couple of annoying little things i still haven't
> > worked out a good way of doing though)
>
> if they're annoying, don't do them.

they're annoying *because* i can't do them!

for instance, suppose i've got a little sam expression that nicely
isolates particular subregions of text.  i can't work out a way to
match only characters which appear at the very beginning (or end) of
"dot".  kind of similar to ^ and $ except with respect to the
boundaries of the current selection.

e.g.  here's an expression that matches mbox entries in an acme Mail
window (tab replaced by \t):

	,x/.+\n(\t.+\n)*/y/^\(deleted\)-/g/./

it would be useful to be able to guard by message number on the
resulting message lines (without worrying about the contents of the
subject line).

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Rob Pike]

> for instance, suppose i've got a little sam expression that nicely
> isolates particular subregions of text.  i can't work out a way to
> match only characters which appear at the very beginning (or end) of
> "dot".  kind of similar to ^ and $ except with respect to the
> boundaries of the current selection.

long ago, i considered making ^ and $ mean this in sam.  they clearly
need to mean beginning and end of line at the top level, but when we
x down, maybe they should mean beginning and end of the substring.
i think i even tried to implement it.  in any case, i decided against
it; i
think it was a combination of not liking the shift in meaning and the
fact
that ^ and $ meaning bol and eol at the top level meant that they
required
special handling already, since sam really doesn't know much about
lines, unlike ed.  if the whole file is just one long string, which is
exactly
how sam works, shouldn't ^ and $ then mean beginning of file and end
of file?  that's not very useful.

and then, in the end, i felt the need for the modified version of ^ and
$
so rarely that i don't really mind not having them. unlike in the modern
world, back then adding a feature was considered something to consider
carefully, rather than just adding it in case someone might conceivably
want it one day.

-rob

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Jim Choate]

On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Rob Pike wrote:

> long ago, i considered making ^ and $ mean this in sam.  they clearly
> need to mean beginning and end of line at the top level, but when we
> x down, maybe they should mean beginning and end of the substring.

> that ^ and $ meaning bol and eol at the top level meant that they
> required

> special handling already, since sam really doesn't know much about
> lines, unlike ed.  if the whole file is just one long string, which is
> exactly
> how sam works, shouldn't ^ and $ then mean beginning of file and end
> of file?  that's not very useful.

Isn't a line just a substring of a file. The extension  of ^ and $ from
line to sub-string is natural. Confusing it with files isn't.

 -- --

God exists because mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exist because we
can't prove it.
                          Andre Weil, in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Adieu

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.com
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.com

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Micah Stetson]

> lines, unlike ed.  if the whole file is just one long string, which is
> exactly
> how sam works, shouldn't ^ and $ then mean beginning of file and end
> of file?  that's not very useful.

I would tend to expect that they meant beginning and end
of selection.  Then if you want to match at the beginnings
and ends of lines, it's just ',x /^...$/', and beginning
and end of file is ',/^...$/'.  I suppose that has its
disadvantages, too, like ',x /$/i/foo/' would put foo at
the beginning of every line but the first, it's logical,
but it's a little unexpected.  Having to match '\n' when
you wanted it, wouldn't be that bad, though.

Micah

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Rob Pike]

consistency with ed's regexes was paramount when sam was written.
it may be less so now.  i was trying to build an editor that treated the
whole file as one string yet didn't offer too many surprises when used
by someone accustomed to ed.  i think it worked out well.

-rob

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Micah Stetson]

> by someone accustomed to ed.  i think it worked out well.

I agree.  Sam is a triumph.  I didn't mean to sound like
I was complaining.  Thanks for a tool I use almost every
day and thank God for often.

Micah

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[boyd]

    i think it worked out well.

so do i.  i've used it for some 12 years now and it only ever screws
up when i do (but i have undo) or /tmp fills up.  once you master 'x'
it's a seriously powerful tool, without all that crap you find in things
like emacs.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> and then, in the end, i felt the need for the modified version of ^
> and $ so rarely that i don't really mind not having them.

for me, it's been frequent enough to feel a little frustrated by it
(particularly when dealing non-line-oriented files).

i wouldn't modify the meaning of ^ and $, rooted as they are in
antiquity.  one could always take a brave leap into the almost
unsullied waters of Unicode...

for instance, one could use « (unicode 0xab) and » (unicode 0xbb) to
indicate a regex anchored to the start or end of "dot".

e.g.

,x/[a-zA-Z0-9]+/g/«A/d

would delete all alphanumeric sequences starting with
the letter 'A'; or

,y/[ \t\n]/y/«./g/./|tr 'A-Z' 'a-z'

would lowercase all but the first letter of all words.  (aside: has
anyone found a good use for the fact that "y" selects null ranges?)

or

,x/^\.TS/.,/^\.TE/y/«...\n/y/...»/x/.*\n»/g/pattern/d

would delete the last line of a tbl table if it contained "pattern".

it seems useful and quite natural to use (and the implementation looks
trivial, in acme at any rate).

BTW while on minor sam/acme gripes, is it a bug or a feature that if a
file is written, changed, and the change undone, the file is not
marked as changed?  this means that X/'/w is not guaranteed to write
out all files that have been modified from their on-disk copies, and
has bitten me more than once (i don't use that idiom any more!)

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rob pike, esq.]

>> and then, in the end, i felt the need for the modified version of ^
>> and $ so rarely that i don't really mind not having them.
>
> for me, it's been frequent enough to feel a little frustrated by it
> (particularly when dealing non-line-oriented files).
>
> i wouldn't modify the meaning of ^ and $, rooted as they are in
> antiquity.  one could always take a brave leap into the almost
> unsullied waters of Unicode...

the waters of special characters for regex hacking are muddy
enough already.   i've been in them before and i'm nice and
clean now.  no, thanks.

> BTW while on minor sam/acme gripes, is it a bug or a feature that if a
> file is written, changed, and the change undone, the file is not
> marked as changed?  this means that X/'/w is not guaranteed to write
> out all files that have been modified from their on-disk copies, and
> has bitten me more than once (i don't use that idiom any more!)

feature.  otherwise you couldn't undo to the point it was clean.

ever do this? (probably not)
	X/'/u
send that until nothing happens and you've backed up to the last
clean instance. you can even snarf and send a bunch of them:

	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	...

weird, but it works.  (to do a particular file, put more detail in the
pattern.)

-rob

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Russ Cox]

just what we need -- more characters to escape in regular expressions.
if you're going to change anything, it makes more sense to sully ^ and $
even further.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[vdharani]

> i wouldn't modify the meaning of ^ and $, rooted as they are in
> antiquity.  one could always take a brave leap into the almost
> unsullied waters of Unicode...
>
> for instance, one could use « (unicode 0xab) and » (unicode 0xbb) to
> indicate a regex anchored to the start or end of "dot".
>
before taking a brave leap, i think we need to make sure the concept will
work on all environments. Can we enter unicode characters easily in Plan 9,
Inferno, and Sam for Windows and any other ports with Plan9/Inferno origin
(like Inferno IE plugin) using a single method and without any problem? If
not, I suggest we try something else (Is it possible to use multiple
characters instead?). It becomes easier for users to remember a single
style.

Thanks
dharani

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> just what we need -- more characters to escape in regular expressions.
> if you're going to change anything, it makes more sense to sully ^ and $
> even further.

s'pose so.  seems a pity.  it seems to work quite nicely now i've
implemented it.  it's not like « and » are common characters to search
for.

one could double them, i guess: ^^ and $$.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> feature.  otherwise you couldn't undo to the point it was clean.

hmm.  "was clean" is quite different from "is clean".  (both are
useful, but they're orthogonal to one another).

perhaps the 'f' line could indicate both (e.g.  with an extra
space/backquote to indicate "is clean").

while on the subject of undo/redo, would it be terrible to have a
"Redoall" command? as when clicking repetitively on "Redo" i
invariably click one too many times (whereupon the "Redo" has replaced
itself by "Put") and write the file unintentionally, sometimes with
annoying results.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Derek Fawcus]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 03:33:22PM +0100, rog@vitanuova.com wrote:
> it's not like « and » are common characters to search for.

Well I seem to recall that they are in the sam source so that one can do the
click-inside-quote and have the selection cover the whole quote.

So which (natural,  I assume) language uses those as quote characters?

DF

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003 rog@vitanuova.com wrote:

> hmm.  "was clean" is quite different from "is clean".  (both are
> useful, but they're orthogonal to one another).

Actually they're not. Orthogonal means they are not related or dependent.
Cleary 'was' is related to 'is' when applied the thing what has the state
'clean'.

 -- --

God exists because mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exist because we
can't prove it.
                          Andre Weil, in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Adieu

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.com
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.com

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Dan Cross]

Derek Fawcus <dfawcus@cisco.com> writes:
> So which (natural,  I assume) language uses those as quote characters?

Russian.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rob pike, esq.]

> while on the subject of undo/redo, would it be terrible to have a
> "Redoall" command? as when clicking repetitively on "Redo" i
> invariably click one too many times (whereupon the "Redo" has replaced
> itself by "Put") and write the file unintentionally, sometimes with
> annoying results.

you're in a vale of tears these days, aren't you?

try
	u100
or some such.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[okamoto]

> Actually they're not. Orthogonal means they are not related or dependent.
> Cleary 'was' is related to 'is' when applied the thing what has the state
> 'clean'.

I know what is the difference between boyd and jchoate, that is intelligence.
Both are sometimes/many times? noisy, but boyd has great intelligence.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> you're in a vale of tears these days, aren't you?

story of my life :-)

or should that be :-( ?

actually they're just things that've niggled for years but without
enough incentive to mention them or change them...

my vale of tears at the moment is more to do with the fact that some
9fans messages are taking days and days to get through (i still
haven't seen the original "some of you guys..."  post yet, for
example, or my original post in this thread).

if it's happening for 9fans, god knows how much other
stuff has been lost in the pipeline. unreliable email is a frustrating thing.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Dennis Ritchie]

 > My first experience of Unix (circa 1976) was on an uppercase-only
 > terminal.  The driver would display lowercase characters as
 > uppercase, and uppercase characters escaped with a backslash;
 >keyboard input was the inverse of this.  So it was a common
 >mistake to type something like this in a C program
 > 	PRINTF("\HELLO, WORLD\N"):
 > which would result in "Hello, worldN" and no newline.

 > Exercise for the reader: how many backslashes are required
 > in the ed 's' command to correct the error?

Years ago I ran into a situation with a script
(probably involving all of the shell, ed, and troff)
in which N½ \ were needed.  N was too few, N+1 were
too many.

	Dennis

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rog]

> Exercise for the reader: how many backslashes are required
> in the ed 's' command to correct the error?

erm, 5? (or 6, depending on the pattern used)

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Richard Miller]

> I also forgot about the terminal driver, which in some
> incarnations defaulted to \ as an escape character,

My first experience of Unix (circa 1976) was on an uppercase-only
terminal.  The driver would display lowercase characters as
uppercase, and uppercase characters escaped with a backslash;
keyboard input was the inverse of this.  So it was a common
mistake to type something like this in a C program
	PRINTF("\HELLO, WORLD\N"):
which would result in "Hello, worldN" and no newline.

Exercise for the reader: how many backslashes are required
in the ed 's' command to correct the error?

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

rob pike, esq. wrote:
> Back to troff: in qed, \ was linear.  You added a
> backslash to quote something.  In a macro, you
> added two backslashes.  In a macro calling a
> macro you added three, etc.   Instead of 2^N,
> you needed N.

I also forgot about the terminal driver, which in some
incarnations defaulted to \ as an escape character,
necessitating typing \\ to enter each one of those \s.
As I recall, Software Tools used @ for all its escape
characters.  Experience seems to suggest that using
the same character as escape at multiple nested levels
of processing is not a good idea ("sucks" is the
technical term).
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: University of Bath Computing Services, UK
Keywords:
Cc:


--
Dennis Davis, BUCS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
D.H.Davis@bath.ac.uk

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rob pike, esq.]

> rob pike, esq. wrote:
>> ... The double meaning of \ in Unix and especially
>> Perl REs is regrettable at best.
>
> And especially in troff macro diversions.  I recall
> seeing \\\\\\\\ on more than one occasion.

That wasn't the double meaning I was referring to,
but yes.  I meant that \w makes w special but that
\* makes * not special.

Back to troff: in qed, \ was linear.  You added a
backslash to quote something.  In a macro, you
added two backslashes.  In a macro calling a
macro you added three, etc.   Instead of 2^N,
you needed N.

-rob

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

rob pike, esq. wrote:
> ... The double meaning of \ in Unix and especially
> Perl REs is regrettable at best.

And especially in troff macro diversions.  I recall
seeing \\\\\\\\ on more than one occasion.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[rob pike, esq.]

> Alternatively, do what perl does:  punctuation uses backslash
> to turn the magic off, letters use punctuation to turn it on.
> So \a and \z could be the end markers.  You'd seldom type
> that, so they're free to use.

This breaks the rules we worked so hard to establish in Plan
9 regular expressions: \ is used only to make something
unmagic.  The double meaning of \ in Unix and especially
Perl REs is regrettable at best.

-rob

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Scott Schwartz]

| just what we need -- more characters to escape in regular expressions.
| if you're going to change anything, it makes more sense to sully ^ and $
| even further.

Alternatively, do what perl does:  punctuation uses backslash
to turn the magic off, letters use punctuation to turn it on.
So \a and \z could be the end markers.  You'd seldom type
that, so they're free to use.

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[Axel Belinfante]

> The only thing that bugs me is that sed isn't ssam,
> I know about sam -d but it doesn't stream.

There is a unix ssam (streaming sam)
 http://www.westley.demon.co.uk/software.html

Re: [9fans] sam command language

[steve.simon]

    i think it worked out well.

One day I must make a serious effort to learn acme
but I feel no pressure to as sam is so wonderfull.

The only thing that bugs me is that sed isn't ssam,
I know about sam -d but it doesn't stream.

-Steve