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* [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2017-02-03 20:00 Dave Horsfall
  2017-02-04 12:38 ` Michael Kjörling
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 51+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2017-02-03 20:00 UTC (permalink / raw)


Co-inventor of Unix, he was born on this day in 1943.  Just think: without 
those two, we'd all be running M$ Windoze and thinking that it's 
wonderful.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2019-02-04 23:42 Doug McIlroy
  2019-02-05  3:49 ` Larry McVoy
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 51+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2019-02-04 23:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

> Ken wrote ... ed(before regexp ed)

Actually Ken wrote a regexp qed (for Multics) before he wrote ed.
He wrote about it here, before the birth of Unix:
Programming Techniques: Regular expression search algorithm 
Ken Thompson 
June 1968 Communications of the ACM: Volume 11 Issue 6, June 1968 

This is the nondetermistic regexp recognizer that's been used 
ever since. Amusingly a reviewer for Computing Reviews panned
the article on the grounds that everybody already knew how to
write a deterministic recognizer that runs in linear time.
There's no use for this slower program. What the reviewer failed
to observe is that it may take time exponential in the size of
the regexp (and ditto for space) to make such a recognizer.
In real life for a one-shot recognizer that can easily be the
dominant cost.

The problem of exponential construction time arose in Al Aho's
egrep. I was an early adopter--for the calendar(1) daemon. The
daemon generated a date recognizer that accepted most any
(American style) date. The regular expresssions were a couple
of hundred bytes long, full of alternations. Aho was chagrinned
to learn that it took about 30 seconds to make a recognizer
that would be used for less than a second. That led Al to the
wonderful invention of a lazily-constructed recognizer that
would only construct the states that were actually visited
during recognition. At last a really linear-time algorithm!

This is one of my favorite examples of the synergy of having
sytems builders and theoreticians together in one small 
department.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Happy Birthday Ken Thompson!
@ 2019-02-04  1:09 Doug McIlroy
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 51+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2019-02-04  1:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

> without those two we'd all be running M$ Windoze

Apropos of which, I complained to Walter Isaacson about his
writing them out of "The Innovators"--Turing Award, National
Medal of Technology, Japan Prize and all. I suppose I should
not be surprised that he didn't deign to answer.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2019-02-03 20:23 Dave Horsfall
  2019-02-03 21:39 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2019-02-04  9:43 ` Donald ODona
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 51+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-02-03 20:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

Co-inventor of Unix, he was born on this day in 1943.  Just think: without 
those two, we'd all be running M$ Windoze and thinking that it's wonderful (I 
know, it's an exaggeration, but think about it).

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* [TUHS]  Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2018-02-03 21:46 Norman Wilson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 51+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2018-02-03 21:46 UTC (permalink / raw)


Or as we old 1127ers would put it:

What day is it, Ken?


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2018-02-03 20:57 Dave Horsfall
  2018-02-03 21:12 ` Donald ODona
  2018-02-03 21:35 ` Will Senn
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 51+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-02-03 20:57 UTC (permalink / raw)


Co-inventor of Unix, he was born on this day in 1943.  Just think: without 
those two, we'd all be running M$ Windoze and thinking that it's 
wonderful (I know, it's an exaggeration, but think about it).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!
@ 2016-02-03 17:38 Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 51+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2016-02-03 17:38 UTC (permalink / raw)


One half of Unix, and what more can I say?

Well, I'll bet not many people know that he shares a birthday with Alice 
Cooper...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 51+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2019-02-05  3:50 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 51+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2017-02-03 20:00 [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ken Thompson! Dave Horsfall
2017-02-04 12:38 ` Michael Kjörling
2017-02-04 12:44   ` Steve Nickolas
2017-02-04 13:15     ` Michael Kjörling
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-02-04 23:42 Doug McIlroy
2019-02-05  3:49 ` Larry McVoy
2019-02-04  1:09 [TUHS] Happy Birthday " Doug McIlroy
2019-02-03 20:23 [TUHS] Happy birthday, " Dave Horsfall
2019-02-03 21:39 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-02-03 22:07   ` Dave Horsfall
2019-02-03 22:33     ` Clem Cole
2019-02-04  2:03       ` Paul Winalski
2019-02-04  3:57       ` Jason Stevens
2019-02-04  6:25         ` Peter Jeremy
2019-02-04  7:59           ` Steve Nickolas
2019-02-04 15:04             ` Dave Horsfall
2019-02-04 15:39             ` Toby Thain
2019-02-04 17:08         ` Al Kossow
2019-02-03 22:39     ` Michael Kjörling
2019-02-03 22:55     ` Steve Nickolas
2019-02-03 23:37       ` Andy Kosela
2019-02-04  0:32     ` Larry McVoy
2019-02-04  1:00       ` Steve Nickolas
2019-02-04  9:43 ` Donald ODona
2018-02-03 21:46 Norman Wilson
2018-02-03 20:57 Dave Horsfall
2018-02-03 21:12 ` Donald ODona
2018-02-03 21:59   ` Andy Kosela
2018-02-04  0:52     ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-04  1:07       ` Lyndon Nerenberg
     [not found]         ` <CAM4FNSvnR+ZkgMyJ-0+p7LKKAYzts-7268RgApteLoT9q=TtYA@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]           ` <CAM4FNSu-eQkt=AeUJ=2uvEwN=BQe7qdWn6ZCQmfFjb9at6uf_w@mail.gmail.com>
2018-02-04  1:29             ` Daniel Camolês
2018-02-04  1:35               ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2018-02-04  1:14       ` Warner Losh
2018-02-04 13:59         ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-02-05 13:13     ` Tony Finch
2018-02-05 15:45       ` Bakul Shah
2018-02-05 16:19         ` Clem Cole
2018-02-05 17:41           ` Bakul Shah
2018-02-05 21:58       ` Andy Kosela
2018-02-05 22:47         ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-05 22:52           ` Toby Thain
2018-02-05 22:54           ` Dan Cross
2018-02-06  4:58             ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-02-06  5:05               ` Gregg Levine
2018-02-03 21:35 ` Will Senn
2018-02-03 21:49   ` Arthur Krewat
2018-02-03 22:59     ` Dave Horsfall
2018-02-04  0:51       ` Steve Simon
     [not found]         ` <CAM4FNStCAj-iFfg_DxyhkZMQu3dTx_4SeSsimALb3e1ktav2KQ@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]           ` <CAM4FNSv41x28yGYcmVLhwjh9LUNfBPNq=dpgtv5jSNuRemsY8A@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]             ` <CAM4FNSvMXLciCPUqZqaWLz7i0OMGesSWcPvETM4+p2Gj0zMPZw@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]               ` <CAM4FNSsNomfRc6LNzFLFeA8EvgAgL7suJ9Zy_1gbVFsU2tkDDw@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                 ` <CAM4FNSu-Ktx5e0UmBkw+ceJzZaM5Y-gWi1DT05jS3eTAoV=tcA@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                   ` <CAM4FNSvxCrOiS=Qg9ntGrDA6P-7MW4pqTis7GpzBcLtTmj5NaA@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                     ` <CAM4FNSsYZx3h35s1509M4La50Gc_AyGtU4SWzg9iQMziuBUDNw@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                       ` <CAM4FNSsYNpdohKZPUaYsyHxUvCTbJ59KgLObZcRcmdsKuRLr5Q@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                         ` <CAM4FNStyCWwPTYVoZ1pcEJqTn-60P-1PTZdv=+P5F38tpUiLqg@mail.gmail.com>
2018-02-04  1:51                           ` Daniel Camolês
2018-02-04 17:33                             ` Toby Thain
2016-02-03 17:38 Dave Horsfall

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