Re: [TUHS] A portrait of cut(1)

[markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>]

Hoi,

thanks a lot for sharing these yet missing pieces of information
and the stories. Very interesting.


meillo


[2020-01-14 23:54] Brian Walden <tuhs@cuzuco.com>
> Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> writes:
> >markus schnalke <meillo at marmaro.de> writes:
> >> [2015-11-09 08:58] Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu>
> >>> things like "cut" and "paste", whose exact provenance
> >>> I can't recall.
> >>
> >> Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to share my portrait of
> >> cut(1) with you. (I sent some questions to this list, a few
> >> months ago, remember?) Now, here it is:
> >>
> >>      http://marmaro.de/docs/freiesmagazin/cut/cut.en.pdf
> >
> >Did you happen to find out what GWRL stands for, in the the comments at
> >the top of early versions of cut.c and paste.c?
> >
> >/* cut : cut and paste columns of a table (projection of a relation) (GWRL) */
> >/* Release 1.5; handles single backspaces as produced by nroff    */
> >/* paste: concatenate corresponding lines of each file in parallel. Release 1.4 (GWRL) */
> >/*        (-s option: serial concatenation like old (127's) paste command */
> >
> >For that matter, what's the "old (127's) paste command" it refers to?
> 
> I know this thread is almost 5 years old, I came across it searching for
> something else But as no one could answer these questions back then, I can.
> 
> GWRL stands for Gottfried W. R. Luderer, the author of cut(1) and paste(1),
> probably around 1978.  Those came either from PWB or USG, as he worked with,
> or for, Berkley Tague. Thus they made their way into AT&T commercial UNIX,
> first into System III and the into System V, and that's why they are missing
> from early BSD releases as they didn't get into Research UNIX until the
> 8th Edition.  Also "127" was the internal department number for the Computer
> Science Research group at Bell Labs where UNIX originated
> 
> Dr. Luderer co-authored this paper in the orginal 1978 BSTJ on UNIX --
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Papers/BSTJ/bstj57-6-2201.pdf
> 
> I knew Dr. Luderer and he was even kind enough to arrange for me stay with his
> relatives for a few days in Braunschweig, West Germany (correct county name for
> the time) on my first trip to Europe many decades ago. But haven't had contact nor
> even thought of him forever until I saw his initials. I also briefly worked for Berk
> when he was the department head for 45263 in Whippany Bell Labs before moving to
> Murray Hill.
> 
> And doing a quick search for him, it looks like he wrote and autobiograhy, which I
> am now going to have to purchase
> http://www.lulu.com/shop/gottfried-luderer/go-west-young-german/paperback/product-23385772.html?ppn=1
> 
> -Brian
>