From: Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Word erase?
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:51:58 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <63655700-31d7-4bd7-ae35-02f10463988e@mhorton.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202404081518.438FIflK003772@freefriends.org>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2392 bytes --]
On 4/8/24 08:18, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> Dan Cross<crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the timing and rationale for
>> the introduction of “word erase” functionality to the kernel terminal
>> driver. My surface skim earlier leads me to believe it came to Unix
>> with 4BSD, but it was not reincorporated into 8th Edition or later,
>> nor did it make it to Plan 9 (which did incorporate ^U for the "line
>> kill" command). TOPS-20 supports it via the familiar ^W, but I'm not
>> sure about other PDP-10 OSes (Lars?). Multics does not support it.
>> VMS does not support it.
>>
>> What was the proximal inspiration? The early terminal drivers seem to
>> use the Multics command editing suite (`#` for erase/backspace, `@`
>> for line kill), though at some point that changed, one presumes as
>> TTYs fell out of favor and display terminals came to the fore.
>>
>> - Dan C.
> My memory jibes with this -- through V7 defaults were # and @, and BSD
> changed to ^H / DEL and ^U. ^W was a BSD thing, probably inspired by
> TOPS-10.
>
Vi had ^W for word erase long before the tty driver. It's documented in
2BSD.
I think it appeared in the tty driver as part of the new tty driver,
around 4.1C. The 4.2 stty(1) documents that you can set werase but only
with the new tty driver.
Personally I fondly recalled it from Tenex and wished for it in UNIX. I
can't recall if I lobbied for it or if anyone heard me.
Chambers and Quarterman noted the new tty driver's presence in 4.1C.
https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX*_System_V_and_4.1C_BSD
> 2.2.5 Ioctls The ioctl system call is essentially
> identical in the two systems. The interesting differences
> are in the terminal driver ioctls. Both drivers utilize the
> ``line discipline'' notion, allowing dynamic choice among
> several protocols by the user process.
>
> Berkeley offers several new features in 4.1C BSD over
> the V7 terminal driver. Some of these are accessed as a new
> line discipline (the ``new tty'' discipline), while a few
> others are implemented as additional ioctl calls.
Thanks,
/Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am)
Award Winning Author
maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com>
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3740 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-04-08 22:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-04-08 15:02 [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2024-04-08 15:15 ` [TUHS] " Marc Donner
2024-04-08 15:18 ` arnold
2024-04-08 15:29 ` Warner Losh
2024-04-08 15:59 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2024-04-08 15:39 ` Larry McVoy
2024-04-08 16:06 ` Rich Salz
2024-04-09 1:51 ` Chris Torek
2024-04-12 15:58 ` Mary Ann Horton
2024-04-08 17:09 ` Steve Nickolas
2024-04-08 22:51 ` Mary Ann Horton [this message]
2024-04-12 1:29 ` Joseph Holsten
2024-04-08 16:14 ` Clem Cole
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=63655700-31d7-4bd7-ae35-02f10463988e@mhorton.net \
--to=mah@mhorton.net \
--cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).