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To: khm@sciops.net, brian@zick.io
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Subject: Re: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #
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Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 06, 2018 at 09:53:33PM +0100, Brian Zick wrote:
> >
> > rc uses ;
>        
> Does it?  10th edition Unix and Plan 9 rc both have ('% ' ' ') as the   
> default value of $prompt.  At least that's how it's described in the
> manual.  None of the v8/9/10 tarballs in the archive contain rc code,
> but some contain manual source, and those describe % prompts.
>
> I've seen other references to ; (presumably  ('; ' ' ')) as the rc 
> prompt but I've never seen it in the wild.  Does anyone here know what 
> the story is?
>        
> khm

I believe that Tom Duff's rc does indeed use ('% ' ' '). But I think that
Byron Rakitsis's version changed the default to ('; ' ' ') exactly for
the reason that it's copyable/pastable.

HTH,

Arnold