source code for PDP-7 dsw command

source code for PDP-7 dsw command

[Eric Fischer]

Sorry for the repetition if you've already seen this.  The
source code for the PDP-7 Unix dsw command was just reposted
in alt.sysadmin.recovery.  Here's the article:


Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery
From: flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal)
Subject: Re: Time to train not one, but 15 PFY's. . .
Date: 23 Nov 99 22:17:39 GMT

SKaranyi+n0 at localhost.ruhr.de (Wolfgang Schelongowski) writes:
>>NAME               dsw -- delete interactively
...
>Radio hams with contact to the `Evil Empire' know that it's the short
>form of doswidanye or so. IOW "Bye".

Fascinating.  It appears that although it was claimed to stand for "delete
from switches", and this is what it actually did, it was also a pun on the
amateur radio abbreviation.

The later program described in the previous article seems to be named after
the original (and no longer deserves the name "dsw").  And the original "dsw"
was *not* interactive.

The original "dsw" program uses the console switches to specify the file
to be deleted, for file names with funny characters in them.  It was
astonishingly round-about: you would set the number 'n' on the switches,
then run dsw, and it found the name of file #n in the current directory,
and then created a core dump which when executed, would delete that file.
Sheesh.  It's not like there wasn't an unlink() system call; why not just
unlink it?  Well, I guess the idea is that you would examine the core file
and make sure it was deleting the right file.  But there are still obvious
trivial improvements.  And why not take the number in argv[1]?

Of course this was well before it was possible to write something like
"rm `command`".

It is interesting that the 1971(?) man page mentions that really there should
be an option to rm, and then goes on to specify "rm -i *" behaviour as
appropriate for a serious version of this command.  That "BUGS" section sure
was a good idea.  I still can't believe the sysV people renamed it to "NOTES".

dmr posted the man page of the original dsw program to net.general in 1981,
and it can thus be found at
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/NET.general/81.08.12_research.19_net.general.html

(there is an earlier posting about dsw, which is a joke)

dmr also posted the source code to net.unix-wizards in 1984.  This is too
late for the "oldnews" archive, so I'll include the article here.  I love
his comment that he considered posting instead to net.sources.


Date: 8 Dec 84 09:45:09 GMT
From: dmr@research.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: dsw: pdp7 memorabilia

I happened to dredge up an old notebook and found a listing
of the PDP-7 version of dsw.  Because several people have approached
me recently about reviving a version of PDP-7 Unix as a sort of
paleontological exhibit, and because the subject has been discussed
here, I thought people might be interested in seeing the code.
I first considered net.sources, but decided not to carry whimsy too far.

		Dennis Ritchie

Notes:

1) The assembler has Knuth-style temporary labels but no literals.

2) The name of the current directory was evidently ".."

3) Formatting is faithfully reproduced.

4) "sys save" makes a core image.
------
" dsw

   lac djmp
   dac .-1
   oas cla
   cma
   tad d1
   dac t1
   sys open; dd; 0
1:
   lac d2
   sys read; dir; 8
   sna
   sys exit
   lac dir
   sna
   jmp 1b
   isz t1
   jmp 1b

wr:
   lac d1
   sys write; dir+1; 4
   lac d1
   sys write; o12; 1
   sys save
do:
   sys unlink; dir+1
   sys exit

d1: 1
d2: 2
o12: 012
t1: 0
djmp: jmp do
dd: 056056; 040040; 040040; 040040
dir: .=.+8



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Thanks to Eric for passing on that posting from Dennis re PDP-7 dsw.

For those who don't read the newsgroups, there's a new version of the
Begemot PDP-11 emulator:

------------------
    From: Hartmut Brandt <brandt at fokus.gmd.de>
    Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11
    Subject: Version 2.4 of the p11 PDP-11 emulator
    Date: 19 Nov 1999 15:04:33 GMT

Version 2.4 of p11 - the Begemot PDP-11 emulator - is available on
ftp.fokus.gmd.de:/pub/cats/usr/harti/p11. This release supports the following
platforms:

	FreeBSD 4.0
	Sparc-Solaris 2.[5678]
	Redhat-Linux

It will possibly work on FreeBSD [23].* and other Linux variants.
To build it you need libbegemot (avalaible in the same location), gcc and
gmake. Previous versions also built on BSD/OS and SunOS.
------------------

Cheers,
	Warren