Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Hendrik Jan Thomassen]

Several decades ago, Jim Joyce of San Francisco was one of the
more colorful chaps in the UNIX scene. Among other ventures he
had "The Independent UNIX Bookstore", and during Usenix conferences
he would rent a nearby hotel suite to sell his books to the
conference attendants. Jim once told me the following story (yes,
the topic is about dmr anecdotes).

One day a young man came to the hotel suite and asked, in a
somewhat exaggerated voice, "the best book to learn C programming".
Jim pointed at a gentleman in a nearby armchair, reading, and said:
"ask that gentleman because he knows everything there is to know
about C". So the young man approached said gentleman, and repeated
his question. The answer he got was: "Sorry, I can't help you, 
because I never had to learn C". Which left the young man flabbergasted.


-- 
Hendrik-Jan Thomassen     <hjt@ATComputing.nl>
AT Computing              Linux opleiders & consultants
Kerkenbos 1238            Tel +31 24 352 72 82
6546 BE  Nijmegen         www.atcomputing.nl

'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.'

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ron]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 308 bytes --]

Years ago I remember someone suggesting that freeware  be renamed “Fluegelware” after Andrew Fluegelman, a pioneer in the concept who had recently died.

I suggested we rename the C compiler “Ritchie” and the I got a “Let’s nip this in the bud” email back from Dennis in short order.

 


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2288 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ches@Cheswick.com]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2882 bytes --]

I am a fan of these routines, and use the regularly, but I didn’t write them.

Message by ches. Tappos by iPad.


> On Jul 10, 2018, at 9:50 PM, Noel Hunt <noel.hunt@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines
> anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3).
> One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was
> William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong.
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:25 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>> RFS vs. NFS and sockets vs. STREAMS were much more serious; they were
>> about the directions Unix would take going forward, where interoperability
>> (RFS/NFS) and code portability (sockets/STREAMS) were big either/or issues.
>> 
>> Had AT&T been smarter about its licensing, both RFS and STREAMS might
>> have "won", but they weren't, and those technologies have all but
>> disappeared.
>> 
>> GNU getopt can be used in a source-compatible way with POSIX getopt;
>> having long options is up to the programmer.  I agree, there were
>> aesthetic arguments, altough long options have mostly "won".  I'm about
>> as long-time a Unix aficianado as anyone else here, and for many things
>> I find long options easier to remember than short ones.
>> 
>> (To their credit, at least initially, the GNU project asked its developers
>> to use the same long options in all programs for operations that were
>> the same.)
>> 
>> Arnold
>> 
>> 
>> George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
>> 
>> > ... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge
>> > flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets,
>> > and getopt
>> >
>> > --no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM,  <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>> > > Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
>> > >> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as
>> > >> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
>> > >> become clearly deficient until after widespread success.
>> > >
>> > > I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
>> > > to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years
>> > > after V7 which was circa 1978.
>> > >
>> > > Here are the dates:
>> > >
>> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c
>> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c
>> > >
>> > > But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
>> > > didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
>> > > adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code
>> > > and man page.
>> > >
>> > > Just a nit, (:-)
>> > >
>> > > Arnold

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4183 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Larry McVoy]

Nope, it went sideways.  But some of the most fun information I've gotten
here went sideways.  But if I offend I do beg your forgiveness.

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 06:37:23PM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
> this is a DMR anecdote?
> 
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 6:32 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 10:20:50AM +1000, Noel Hunt wrote:
> > > I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines
> > > anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3).
> > > One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was
> > > William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong.
> >
> > It's nice but I like long opts.  The getopt in BK (and now in L)
> > looks like this and produces its own help (which does miss the
> > short opts, my bad, I could fix that).  Look at the default in
> > the switch:
> >
> > int
> > main(int ac, string av[])
> > {
> >         string  c;
> >         string  lopts[] = {
> >                 "bigy:",
> >                 "date-split",
> >                 "exif",
> >                 "exif-hover",
> >                 "force",
> >                 "index:",
> >                 "names",
> >                 "nav",
> >                 "parallel:",
> >                 "quiet",
> >                 "regen",
> >                 "reverse",
> >                 "sharpen",
> >                 "slide:",
> >                 "thumbnails",
> >                 "title:",
> >                 "ysize:",
> >         };
> >
> >         while (c = getopt(av, "fj:", lopts)) {
> >                 switch (c) {
> >                     case "bigy": bigy = (int)optarg; break;
> >                     case "date-split": dates = 1; break;
> >                     case "exif": exif = 1; break;
> >                     case "exif-hover": exif_hover = 1; break;
> >                     case "f":
> >                     case "force":
> >                     case "regen":
> >                         force = 1; break;
> >                     case "index": indexf = optarg; break;
> >                     case "j":
> >                     case "parallel": parallel = (int)optarg; break;
> >                     case "quiet": quiet = 1; break;
> >                     case "names": names = 1; break;
> >                     case "nav": nav = 1; break;
> >                     case "reverse": reverse = 1; break;
> >                     case "sharpen": sharpen = 1; break;
> >                     case "slide": slidef = optarg; break;
> >                     case "title": title = optarg; break;
> >                     case "thumbnails": thumbnails = 1; break;
> >                     case "ysize": ysize = (int)optarg; break;
> >                     default:
> >                         printf("Usage: photos.l");
> >                         foreach(c in lopts) {
> >                                 if (c =~ /(.*):/) {
> >                                         printf(" --%s=<val>", $1);
> >                                 } else {
> >                                         printf(" --%s", c);
> >                                 }
> >                         }
> >                         printf("\n");
> >                         return(0);
> >                 }
> >         }
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ron minnich]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2880 bytes --]

this is a DMR anecdote?

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 6:32 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 10:20:50AM +1000, Noel Hunt wrote:
> > I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines
> > anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3).
> > One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was
> > William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong.
>
> It's nice but I like long opts.  The getopt in BK (and now in L)
> looks like this and produces its own help (which does miss the
> short opts, my bad, I could fix that).  Look at the default in
> the switch:
>
> int
> main(int ac, string av[])
> {
>         string  c;
>         string  lopts[] = {
>                 "bigy:",
>                 "date-split",
>                 "exif",
>                 "exif-hover",
>                 "force",
>                 "index:",
>                 "names",
>                 "nav",
>                 "parallel:",
>                 "quiet",
>                 "regen",
>                 "reverse",
>                 "sharpen",
>                 "slide:",
>                 "thumbnails",
>                 "title:",
>                 "ysize:",
>         };
>
>         while (c = getopt(av, "fj:", lopts)) {
>                 switch (c) {
>                     case "bigy": bigy = (int)optarg; break;
>                     case "date-split": dates = 1; break;
>                     case "exif": exif = 1; break;
>                     case "exif-hover": exif_hover = 1; break;
>                     case "f":
>                     case "force":
>                     case "regen":
>                         force = 1; break;
>                     case "index": indexf = optarg; break;
>                     case "j":
>                     case "parallel": parallel = (int)optarg; break;
>                     case "quiet": quiet = 1; break;
>                     case "names": names = 1; break;
>                     case "nav": nav = 1; break;
>                     case "reverse": reverse = 1; break;
>                     case "sharpen": sharpen = 1; break;
>                     case "slide": slidef = optarg; break;
>                     case "title": title = optarg; break;
>                     case "thumbnails": thumbnails = 1; break;
>                     case "ysize": ysize = (int)optarg; break;
>                     default:
>                         printf("Usage: photos.l");
>                         foreach(c in lopts) {
>                                 if (c =~ /(.*):/) {
>                                         printf(" --%s=<val>", $1);
>                                 } else {
>                                         printf(" --%s", c);
>                                 }
>                         }
>                         printf("\n");
>                         return(0);
>                 }
>         }
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4303 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[George Michaelson]

De gustibus non est disputandum.

De unibus non est synchronus and um.

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 10:20:50AM +1000, Noel Hunt wrote:
> I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines
> anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3).
> One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was
> William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong.

It's nice but I like long opts.  The getopt in BK (and now in L)
looks like this and produces its own help (which does miss the 
short opts, my bad, I could fix that).  Look at the default in
the switch:

int
main(int ac, string av[])
{
	string	c;
	string	lopts[] = {
		"bigy:",
		"date-split",
		"exif",
		"exif-hover",
		"force",
		"index:",
		"names",
		"nav",
		"parallel:",
		"quiet",
		"regen",
		"reverse",
		"sharpen",
		"slide:",
		"thumbnails",
		"title:",
		"ysize:",
	};

	while (c = getopt(av, "fj:", lopts)) {
		switch (c) {
		    case "bigy": bigy = (int)optarg; break;
		    case "date-split": dates = 1; break;
		    case "exif": exif = 1; break;
		    case "exif-hover": exif_hover = 1; break;
		    case "f":
		    case "force":
		    case "regen":
			force = 1; break;
		    case "index": indexf = optarg; break;
		    case "j":
		    case "parallel": parallel = (int)optarg; break;
		    case "quiet": quiet = 1; break;
		    case "names": names = 1; break;
		    case "nav": nav = 1; break;
		    case "reverse": reverse = 1; break;
		    case "sharpen": sharpen = 1; break;
		    case "slide": slidef = optarg; break;
		    case "title": title = optarg; break;
		    case "thumbnails": thumbnails = 1; break;
		    case "ysize": ysize = (int)optarg; break;
		    default: 
			printf("Usage: photos.l");
			foreach(c in lopts) {
				if (c =~ /(.*):/) {
					printf(" --%s=<val>", $1);
				} else {
					printf(" --%s", c);
				}
			}
			printf("\n");
			return(0);
		}
	}

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Noel Hunt]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2562 bytes --]

I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines
anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3).
One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was
William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong.


On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:25 PM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> RFS vs. NFS and sockets vs. STREAMS were much more serious; they were
> about the directions Unix would take going forward, where interoperability
> (RFS/NFS) and code portability (sockets/STREAMS) were big either/or issues.
>
> Had AT&T been smarter about its licensing, both RFS and STREAMS might
> have "won", but they weren't, and those technologies have all but
> disappeared.
>
> GNU getopt can be used in a source-compatible way with POSIX getopt;
> having long options is up to the programmer.  I agree, there were
> aesthetic arguments, altough long options have mostly "won".  I'm about
> as long-time a Unix aficianado as anyone else here, and for many things
> I find long options easier to remember than short ones.
>
> (To their credit, at least initially, the GNU project asked its developers
> to use the same long options in all programs for operations that were
> the same.)
>
> Arnold
>
>
> George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
>
> > ... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge
> > flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets,
> > and getopt
> >
> > --no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM,  <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> > > Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
> > >> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for
> something as
> > >> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would
> not
> > >> become clearly deficient until after widespread success.
> > >
> > > I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
> > > to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two
> years
> > > after V7 which was circa 1978.
> > >
> > > Here are the dates:
> > >
> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980
> usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c
> > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c
> > >
> > > But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
> > > didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
> > > adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the
> code
> > > and man page.
> > >
> > > Just a nit, (:-)
> > >
> > > Arnold
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3756 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Clem Cole]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1208 bytes --]

Right (and I agree) -- widespread usage/really being noticed.
And that was because it came in the Summit releases not the Research/UCB
stream, which did not help either.
ᐧ

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 1:54 AM, <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> > BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
> > still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something
> as
> > important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
> > become clearly deficient until after widespread success.
>
> I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
> to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years
> after V7 which was circa 1978.
>
> Here are the dates:
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/
> getopt.c
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c
>
> But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
> didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
> adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code
> and man page.
>
> Just a nit, (:-)
>
> Arnold
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2108 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[arnold]

RFS vs. NFS and sockets vs. STREAMS were much more serious; they were
about the directions Unix would take going forward, where interoperability
(RFS/NFS) and code portability (sockets/STREAMS) were big either/or issues.

Had AT&T been smarter about its licensing, both RFS and STREAMS might
have "won", but they weren't, and those technologies have all but
disappeared.

GNU getopt can be used in a source-compatible way with POSIX getopt;
having long options is up to the programmer.  I agree, there were
aesthetic arguments, altough long options have mostly "won".  I'm about
as long-time a Unix aficianado as anyone else here, and for many things
I find long options easier to remember than short ones.

(To their credit, at least initially, the GNU project asked its developers
to use the same long options in all programs for operations that were
the same.)

Arnold


George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:

> ... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge
> flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets,
> and getopt
>
> --no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that
>
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM,  <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> > Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> >> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
> >> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as
> >> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
> >> become clearly deficient until after widespread success.
> >
> > I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
> > to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years
> > after V7 which was circa 1978.
> >
> > Here are the dates:
> >
> > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c
> > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c
> >
> > But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
> > didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
> > adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code
> > and man page.
> >
> > Just a nit, (:-)
> >
> > Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[George Michaelson]

... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge
flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets,
and getopt

--no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM,  <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
>> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as
>> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
>> become clearly deficient until after widespread success.
>
> I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
> to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years
> after V7 which was circa 1978.
>
> Here are the dates:
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c
>
> But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
> didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
> adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code
> and man page.
>
> Just a nit, (:-)
>
> Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[arnold]

Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as
> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
> become clearly deficient until after widespread success.

I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt.  Getopt dates
to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years
after V7 which was circa 1978.

Here are the dates:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11  1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c
-rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16  1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c

But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt
didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to
adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code
and man page.

Just a nit, (:-)

Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Clem Cole]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1999 bytes --]

With V5/V6 C I/O was a lot like what Larry was describing for getopts(3) it
was all over over the map.  There was the portable I/O library which I sort
of think of as the prequel to studio but I don’t remember uSing it much.  I
must have run into most of the different ways people did I/O in some
program(s) but I don’t remember any one off hand.

I think the thing to remember is that at the time system programming
languages such as C and Bliss were noted for not having I/O built into the
language- it was supported externally.  DEC (CMU) with Bliss had rich set
of libraries (often in assembler already available) and force/matched by
them with their users.  Unix and C grew up independently which I think is
part of why it was a tad more random.   BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was
still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as
important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not
become clearly deficient until after widespread success.

On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 12:37 PM Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 1, 2018, at 07:34, ron@ronnatalie.com wrote:
> > The bigger issue with the early printf is it just called putchar and
> > putchar only output to stdout or what ever the global fout variable was
> > set to.
> > There was a comment in the manual that the fout concept was kludgy.
>
> V6 'iolib' printf has an interesting approach to fixing this:
>
> If the first argument was 0 through 9, it was taken to be a file
> descriptor, and the second argument was the format string. If it was -1,
> the second argument was the output string (as for later sprintf), and the
> third was the format string. Otherwise, the first argument was the format
> string.
>
> (I'm curious as to how much "iolib" was actually used, since it doesn't
> appear to have been included by default - there was a different printf
> routine in libc)
>
-- 
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2479 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Random832]

On Sun, Jul 1, 2018, at 07:34, ron@ronnatalie.com wrote:
> The bigger issue with the early printf is it just called putchar and 
> putchar only output to stdout or what ever the global fout variable was 
> set to.
> There was a comment in the manual that the fout concept was kludgy.

V6 'iolib' printf has an interesting approach to fixing this:

If the first argument was 0 through 9, it was taken to be a file descriptor, and the second argument was the format string. If it was -1, the second argument was the output string (as for later sprintf), and the third was the format string. Otherwise, the first argument was the format string.

(I'm curious as to how much "iolib" was actually used, since it doesn't appear to have been included by default - there was a different printf routine in libc)

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Perry E. Metzger]

Incredibly lame anecdote follows:

Decades ago, I buttonholed dmr at a Usenix ATC and asked him a
bunch of questions about early Unix kernels. I can't remember any of
the specifics any longer (which is a shame in itself), but I do
remember that instead of shooing me away, he was insanely polite and
kind even though he didn't know me and had no reason to be so nice.
Afterwards someone (I think it may have been Tom Christiansen)
pointed out to me that I'd taken up far too much of his time, and
said something to the effect that one had to be careful not to take
excess advantage of his kindness.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[arnold]

Hi All.

Kudos to Warren for helping me track down the original USENET postings
that make up a fun DMR story.

In October of 1985, a guy from Teklabs posted a long rant against
both Unix and the people at USENIX conferences.  The original
rant is available here (thanks Warren!):

> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.org.usenix/1985-October/000163.html
> and in this text file:
> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.org.usenix/1985-October.txt.gz

Dennis replied - the relevant part of what he was replying to is
in his message available here:

> https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix/1985-October/005952.html

Here is the full text of Dennis's note:

| Groupies
|
| dmr at dutoit.UUCP dmr at dutoit.UUCP 
| Wed Oct 9 15:30:04 AEST 1985
|
|------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| tekadg!davidl writes, at considerable length and with widespread distribution:
| 
| > ... Socially, Usenix is like a
| > spherical glob, with a handful of original software authors at the center (the
| > ones who wrote the original code, like the developers of Unix, C, etc. - the
| > ones whose names are always being bandied about). Around these, there's a
| > surrounding shell of what has been aptly called "Unix groupies" trying to
| > associate themselves, both logically and physically, with the "illuminati"
| > at the center.  Typically, these loathsome little insects are system
| > administrators and hackers who spend their time either on the net or
| > endlessly rewriting UUCP or NROFF or, or, or... And, I'm told, there are
| > even some real, honest-to-goodness groupies (of the rock-star variety) who
| > spend their time trying get near the "inner circle" for - never mind...
| > it's believable, though -  it's certainly consistent with the demeanor of
| > the rest of the proceedings.
| 
| Usenix conventions, which are undeniably and appropriately narrow-minded
| and introverted, sport more than a few bores, but are notable for absence
| of loathsome insects.  Even the irascible Rob Pike remarked after Portland,
| "Goodness, there were very few loathesome insects there."
| 
| They are also marked by a lack of honest-to-goodness rock-star-variety
| groupies.  Believe me on this.  The free cocaine was nowhere in evidence,
| I consumed no cigar-sized hash bombers, the insistent, complaisant
| lovelies were elsewhere by the time I got back from dinner.  Indeed, the
| plaster of Paris I had obtained in case anyone wanted a cast of my genitals
| went entirely unused.
| 
| Still, I understand the party that AT&T threw in Washington
| was pretty wild.  Too bad I missed it.
| 
| 	DMR

All this was in October 1985.

At the Atlanta USENIX in the summer of 1986, there was some kind of
contest (I don't remember what) and they announced (undoubtedly as a joke)
that one of the prizes was "a plaster cast of Dennis Ritchie's genitals."
It got a good laugh.

Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

Not quite a dmr anecdote, but maybe this list can clear up a statement that dmr reputedly made: “streams means something different when shouted”.
I think the claim goes back to around the turn of the millennium and as far as I know it is not disputed that dmr either said this or could have said this.

Now, from reading this list over the years my understanding of the above statement is that dmr designed streams as a mechanism to clean up the kernel handling of line disciplines in a context of access via a terminal and/or modem, and that STREAMS developed this into a way to integrate network stacks with the kernel — hence streams meant something different when shouted.

The original dmr paper (1984) on streams (http://cm.bell-labs.co/who/dmr/st.html) seemed to support this understanding, focussing on terminal handling in its discussion. Also, near the end it says: "Streams are linear connections; by themselves, they support no notion of multiplexing, fan-in or fan-out. [...] It seems likely that a general multiplexing mechanism could help in both cases, but again, I do not yet know how to design it.” This seemed to exclude usage for networking, which is typically multiplexed.

However, now that the V8 sources are available it is clear that the streams mechanism was used (by dmr?) to implement TCP/IP networking. He explains how that tallies with the above quote on multiplexing in a 1985 usenet post: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/net.unix-wizards/subject$3Astreams/net.unix-wizards/b7W_j_0qASU
(if the post by dmr does not immediately appear, click on the 8-10-85 post by 'd...@dutoit.uucp’ to make it fold out: this is the message I refer to).

The way I read this usenet post, dmr was actually reasonably content with implementing a network stack on top of (lowercase) streams. This then implies that he was alluding to something else when saying “streams means something different when shouted” (or maybe he never said it).

Any opinions on what he might have meant?

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Norman Wilson]

Greg Lehey:

  No, that was Peter Weinberger, as dmr confirmed.  There's quite a
  story behind what happened to the stencil.  I'll let Warren tell it,
  but if you want to cheat, check
  http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-oct2002.php#17

====

There are many stories behind the use and abuse of Peter's
face.  The canonical source is

http://spinroot.com/pico/pjw.html

spinroot.com belongs to Gerard Holzman, who was involved
with many creative uses of digitized photography during
my time at the Labs.  (Also much work on software reliability,
which he now pursues at JPL.)

The org chart with every face replaced by Peter's was on
the wall of the UNIX Room when I first visited 1127 in
February 1984.  I suspect it appeared not long after Peter
became a department head, but I don't know just when that
was.

Peter didn't really take the alleged glory of being a
department head all that seriously, just the responsibilities.
One of the official glories was that Department Heads were
supposed to get carpet in their offices, atop the standard
linoleum tiles.  Peter didn't want it, and (as he told me
the story later) had to argue with Facilities a lot not to get it.
Somehow this resulted in a trophy: a small square of carpet
stuck to the wall outside his office.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ron]

Dennis always answered his emails and was very humble in the light of most
of the UNIX guys holding him in god like status.   I remember he'd sit with
us in the lobby or cocktail lounge or by the pool at the USENIX meetings.
Just happy to be hanging out with the rest of us.    One year, while I was
working for the Army and we were getting a lot of internal pressure to use
Ada, I made a bunch of t-shirts up that had Ada Lovelace with a big red
circle/slash (NO) on it.   I pointed out that at the time there were several
government projects to write internet routers contracted out and all
mandated Ada.   I developed one in house at the Army and wrote it in C (it
also used media with UNIX boot blocks on it).    

I gave Dennis one of these shirts at a conference.   I saw subsequent
pictures of him wearing it.

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ron]

Printf didn't use nargs (and still doesn't).    It looked at the presence of the % markers and assumes that’s how many arguments were passed.
It worked on the PDP-11 or any similar stack calling sequence.   It was only after C got moved to some of the more varied architectures that
VARARGS/STDARG was implemented to achieve some level of variable argument portability.   Even so, there's not a concept of "nargs" to this day.

The PDP-11 nargs was a kludge that looked at the calling code.   This obviously didn't work if you were in split I-D mode (where you couldn't address the
i-space).    There was a published hack to rewire the processor to allow MTPI to work in user mode from your OWN I space to make it work.

The bigger issue with the early printf is it just called putchar and putchar only output to stdout or what ever the global fout variable was set to.
There was a comment in the manual that the fout concept was kludgy.


-----Original Message-----
From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of Dave Horsfall
Sent: Sunday, July 1, 2018 1:30 AM
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

On Sat, 30 Jun 2018, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:

> As I was told this visitor was the R in the “K&R” book I felt I could 
> finally ask “someone who knew” how printf() worked with a variable 
> number of arguments.

It wouldn't've used that awful nargs() call at that time, would it?  I was glad when that horror was removed.

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Arrigo Triulzi]

On 1 Jul 2018, at 07:29, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 30 Jun 2018, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:
> 
>> As I was told this visitor was the R in the “K&R” book I felt I could finally ask “someone who knew” how printf() worked with a variable number of arguments.
> 
> It wouldn't've used that awful nargs() call at that time, would it?  I was glad when that horror was removed.

I was about 10 at the time, I hope you will excuse me for not recalling this detail. I just recall the way that he used my “arrows in the street” to explain how printf() walked through the argument list carrying an arrow on its shoulder, then did what it had to do until it got to the end of the street. As you can probably imagine it is still how I visualise the workings of printf() to this day. Note that this was pure K&R, pre-ANSI C varargs.

Arrigo

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Dave Horsfall]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 338 bytes --]

On Sat, 30 Jun 2018, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:

> As I was told this visitor was the R in the “K&R” book I felt I could 
> finally ask “someone who knew” how printf() worked with a variable 
> number of arguments.

It wouldn't've used that awful nargs() call at that time, would it?  I was 
glad when that horror was removed.

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 01:29:24AM +0200, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:
> On 1 Jul 2018, at 00:42, Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
> > On 6/30/2018 7:44 AM, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:
> >>  I remember that he asked me if I understood pointers, I told him it was like putting a big arrow which you could move around, pointing to a house instead of actually using the house number and he smiled then taking the explanation on from there.
> >> 
> > ok, where's the "Like" button?!?!??!?
> > 
> > Just kidding, all, but what a wonderful story.
> 
> By all accounts he was a wonderful person.

He really was.  Always willing to teach someone who wasn't up to speed yet
but was trying.  That story about the 10 year old should be on a plaque 
somewhere.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Arrigo Triulzi]

On 1 Jul 2018, at 00:42, Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
> On 6/30/2018 7:44 AM, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:
>>  I remember that he asked me if I understood pointers, I told him it was like putting a big arrow which you could move around, pointing to a house instead of actually using the house number and he smiled then taking the explanation on from there.
>> 
> ok, where's the "Like" button?!?!??!?
> 
> Just kidding, all, but what a wonderful story.

By all accounts he was a wonderful person.

Arrigo

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Arthur Krewat]

On 6/30/2018 7:44 AM, Arrigo Triulzi wrote:
>   I remember that he asked me if I understood pointers, I told him it was like putting a big arrow which you could move around, pointing to a house instead of actually using the house number and he smiled then taking the explanation on from there.
>
ok, where's the "Like" button?!?!??!?

Just kidding, all, but what a wonderful story.

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Steve Johnson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1638 bytes --]

Another DMR memory.   We typically worked in the "Unix Room" up in
the attic, where there were a number of terminals and (at the time)
one phone line.  I remember overhearing Dennis talking on the phone
quite patiently with a guy from another location who wanted some
feature added to C or Unix (don't remember which).  Dennis explained
several time why the feature was difficult to implement, wouldn't
solve his problem, and could, in some cases, lock up the operating
system.   The guy on the other end kept arguing.   Finally Dennis
suggested that he arrange a meeting so we could better understand the
problem and get some other ideas on how to solve it.   "Oh, I
couldn't do that!  We have to make a decision by 5PM today!"   
Dennis sighed and said "You mean, this problem is so important and
urgent that you don't have time to think about it?"

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Forrest" <nobozo@gmail.com>
To:<tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Cc:
Sent:Fri, 29 Jun 2018 18:45:25 -0700
Subject:Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

 In the early 1980s my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were visiting
 Bell Lab's Murray Hill research facility where a friend of mine
 worked. My friend had nothing to do with Unix, but I asked him
 to take us by the area where the Unix work was being done.

 What my wife still remembers to this day is when we saw Dennis
 Ritchie sitting at a terminal, with about 7 guys surrounding him.
 They were all giggling loudly at something on the screen. My wife
 couldn't understand what could be so funny to cause all those guys to
 react that way.

 Jon Forrest


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2302 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[John P. Linderman]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 455 bytes --]

Peter and the magnets

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 7:55 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 29 Jun 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:
>
> We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for
>> ken-related anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?
>>
>
> Wasn't it Dennis whose morphed picture featured on a t-shirt at an AUUG
> conference in the 80s?  I can't seem to find a reference right now,,,
>
> -- Dave
>

[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 972 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: pjw.jpg --]
[-- Type: image/jpeg, Size: 130047 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Arrigo Triulzi]

My memories of dmr are limited to one encounter when he came to Italy, more precisely to the University of Milan, in the late 70s or early 80s (cannot remember exactly, there’s a picture in Peter Salus’ book though).

I was a child, had been introduced to Lisp as part of an experiment in teaching to primary school children but my dad, at the time teaching robotics in the nascent “Cybernetics” group of the Physics department, was starting me on C. 

As I was told this visitor was the R in the “K&R” book I felt I could finally ask “someone who knew” how printf() worked with a variable number of arguments. I was at best 10 and dmr patiently sat down and explained it to me in terms I could understand. I remember that he asked me if I understood pointers, I told him it was like putting a big arrow which you could move around, pointing to a house instead of actually using the house number and he smiled then taking the explanation on from there.

I wish I could have met him again in my life to thank him for that time he dedicated to a child to demystify printf().

Arrigo 

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Jon Forrest]

In the early 1980s my girlfriend (now my wife) and I were visiting
Bell Lab's Murray Hill research facility where a friend of mine
worked. My friend had nothing to do with Unix, but I asked him
to take us by the area where the Unix work was being done.

What my wife still remembers to this day is when we saw Dennis
Ritchie sitting at a terminal, with about 7 guys surrounding him.
They were all giggling loudly at something on the screen. My wife
couldn't understand what could be so funny to cause all those guys to
react that way.

Jon Forrest

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Larry McVoy]

I've told this story so much that my kids hear me start it and go "is that
the Unix guy?  Yeah, we've heard this".  And I think many of you have heard
it as well so you can hit delete, but for the newbies to the list here goes.

Decades ago I was a grad student at UWisc and pretty active on comp.arch
and comp.unix-wizards (I was not a wizard but I've lived through, and
written up, the process of restoring a Masscomp after having done some
variant of rm -rf / so a stupid wizard wanna be?)

From time to time, some Unix kernel thing would come up and I'd email
...!research!dmr and ask him how that worked.  

He *always* replied.  To me, a nobody.  All he cared was that the question
wasn't retarded (and I bet to him some of mine were but the questions showed
that I was thinking and that was good enough for him).  I remember a long
discussion about something, I think PIPEBUF but not sure, and at some point
he sent me his phone number and said "call me".  Email was too slow.

So yeah, one of the inventors of Unix was cool enough to take some young
nobody and educate him.  That's Dennis.

I've tried to pass some of that energy forward to my kids, telling them
that if you want to learn, smart people like that and they will help you.

Dennis was a humble man, a smart man, and a dude willing to pass on what
he knew.

I miss him and cherish the interactions I had with him.

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Steve Johnson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3326 bytes --]

That so sounds like Dennis!   I can add a couple of other things
about Dennis, outside of work.  

A group of us used to go into New York from time to time to take in a
concert, and Dennis was often one of the group.   One time in the
dead of winter, we went to an Early Music concert in a cold drafty
church in winter--it was part of a series called "Music before
1620".    The musicians were almost unable to get their instruments
to stay in tune, and the whole thing was kind of train wreck.   On
the way back, Dennis said "It's clear that pitch was invented sometime
after 1620."

On another occasion, we found ourselves in Brooklyn having blintzes
outside on picnic tables.  My 4-year-old son was with us.  My wife
was telling people how my son was starting to ask questions about
sex.   My son, hearing his name, said "What's sex?".   Dennis said
"See."

A work-related anecdote.  There was a manager in USG who managed to
get on the nerves of many of us in Research.   One day we came in to
discover that he had been promoted and took a job in Japan.   We
were discussing this at lunch, and someone said "Why Japan?".  
Dennis said "They haven't opened their office on the moon yet."

Steve

PS:  I certainly remember the belt buckle quip.  That chip was so
big that they could not finish the test patterns before the chip came
back.   So they generated random tests and compared the results
until they found two that were the same.  They concluded that these
two chips were fabricated correctly, and went on from there.   The
chip had a number of flaws, and we scrambled to fix them in
software.  One was that the branch instruction garbled the last 4
bits of the branch target.   So one of the guys hacked the assembler
to make every label the center of a "target" of 32 NOP instructions. 
We were able to get the chip to run, and even run an asteroid
game....  The guy to made the fix put up a sign outside of his office
that said "BellMac chips fixed while U wait."   The same VP was
rather PO'd about this as well...

----- Original Message -----
From: "ches@Cheswick.com" <ches@cheswick.com>
To:"Warren Toomey" <wkt@tuhs.org>
Cc:<tuhs@tuhs.org>
Sent:Fri, 29 Jun 2018 06:53:02 -0400
Subject:Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

 Dennis, do you have any recommendations on good books to use the
learn C?

 I don’t know, I never had to learn C. -dmr

 Message by ches. Tappos by iPad.

 > On Jun 29, 2018, at 3:53 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:
 > 
 > We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for
ken-related
 > anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?
 > 
 > I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time
about my
 > interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he
still had.
 > 
 > Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact
and say:
 > well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute
again, sigh.
 > 
 > I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you,
it worked,
 > which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys'
kernel, and
 > the first two C compilers, in executable format.
 > 
 > Any other good anecdotes?
 > 
 > Cheers, Warren



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4091 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 883 bytes --]

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  9:55:02 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Jun 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:
>
>> We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for
>> ken-related anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr
>> anecdotes?
>
> Wasn't it Dennis whose morphed picture featured on a t-shirt at an AUUG
> conference in the 80s?  I can't seem to find a reference right now,,,

No, that was Peter Weinberger, as dmr confirmed.  There's quite a
story behind what happened to the stencil.  I'll let Warren tell it,
but if you want to cheat, check
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-oct2002.php#17

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2018, Warren Toomey wrote:

> We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for 
> ken-related anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr 
> anecdotes?

Wasn't it Dennis whose morphed picture featured on a t-shirt at an AUUG 
conference in the 80s?  I can't seem to find a reference right now,,,

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[John P. Linderman]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1591 bytes --]

I heard about this second hand, so anyone with first hand knowledge should
feel free to correct me.

When AT&T took an ill-fated plunge into chip manufacture, our chips were on
the large side. Dennis noted that "When Intel spoils a wafer, they turn the
chips into tie-tacks. When we spoil a wafer, we turn the chips into belt
buckles". This so infuriated the VP in charge of manufacture that he wanted
"this dmr guy" fired. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 6:53 AM, ches@Cheswick.com <ches@cheswick.com>
wrote:

> Dennis, do you have any recommendations on good books to use the learn C?
>
> I don’t know, I never had to learn C.   -dmr
>
> Message by ches. Tappos by iPad.
>
>
> > On Jun 29, 2018, at 3:53 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for
> ken-related
> > anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?
> >
> > I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time about my
> > interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he still
> had.
> >
> > Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact and
> say:
> > well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute again,
> sigh.
> >
> > I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you, it
> worked,
> > which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys' kernel,
> and
> > the first two C compilers, in executable format.
> >
> > Any other good anecdotes?
> >
> > Cheers, Warren
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2278 bytes --]

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[ches@Cheswick.com]

Dennis, do you have any recommendations on good books to use the learn C?

I don’t know, I never had to learn C.   -dmr

Message by ches. Tappos by iPad.


> On Jun 29, 2018, at 3:53 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for ken-related
> anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?
> 
> I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time about my
> interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he still had.
> 
> Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact and say:
> well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute again, sigh.
> 
> I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you, it worked,
> which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys' kernel, and
> the first two C compilers, in executable format.
> 
> Any other good anecdotes?
> 
> Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

[Warren Toomey]

We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for ken-related
anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes?

I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time about my
interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he still had.

Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact and say:
well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute again, sigh.

I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you, it worked,
which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys' kernel, and
the first two C compilers, in executable format.

Any other good anecdotes?

Cheers, Warren