From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.8 required=5.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,NICE_REPLY_A,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 15405 invoked from network); 3 Sep 2020 21:03:15 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 3 Sep 2020 21:03:15 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id F00259CA71; Fri, 4 Sep 2020 07:03:12 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76D799CA4C; Fri, 4 Sep 2020 07:01:54 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 7EF739CA4C; Fri, 4 Sep 2020 07:01:50 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 468 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:01:49 AEST Received: from smtp115.ord1d.emailsrvr.com (smtp115.ord1d.emailsrvr.com [184.106.54.115]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9CCB49CA4B for ; Fri, 4 Sep 2020 07:01:49 +1000 (AEST) X-Auth-ID: halbert@halwitz.org Received: by smtp23.relay.ord1d.emailsrvr.com (Authenticated sender: halbert-AT-halwitz.org) with ESMTPSA id CA0462039D for ; Thu, 3 Sep 2020 16:54:00 -0400 (EDT) To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org References: From: Dan Halbert Message-ID: <930753f9-7b52-03bb-18e9-e61de3fa94c2@halwitz.org> Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2020 16:54:00 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------2BB1AD14C0997C2A7812AC64" Content-Language: en-US X-Classification-ID: dd886b4a-ba02-4263-a284-711e6ca2955d-1-1 Subject: Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------2BB1AD14C0997C2A7812AC64 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit My guess is that this was invented independently several times. I think I used it myself in the 70's (and not on UNIX), as soon as I had a text editor, because "XXX" was easy to search for and was not going to overlap with variable names, etc. There's a discussion here: https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2017-04-17-xxx-fixme Dan H. On 9/3/20 4:35 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > I'll also add that this seemed foreign when I had patches that had XXX > in them I submitted to the linux folks in the early 90s. It was second > nature in the BSD side of things. But I don't know if that's a > Berkeley thing or a Bell Labs thing Berkeley picked up... > > Warner > > On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 12:11 PM Warner Losh > wrote: > > The earliest my quick grep could find was 4.0BSD. I didn't find it > in this sense in pwb, but it was a quick grep... > > xxx is used extensively in prior versions, but there it's meaning > is 'placeholder' or 'don't care'. Mostly for /tmp/XXXX files, but > also for things like Jxxx handles all the jump commands or dates > of the form 24 Feb XXXX or stuff like that. > > Warner > > On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:34 AM Dave Horsfall > wrote: > > For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more > work" or > "look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself. > > Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB, > but can't be > sure. > > -- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX" > --------------2BB1AD14C0997C2A7812AC64 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit My guess is that this was invented independently several times. I think I used it myself in the 70's (and not on UNIX), as soon as I had a text editor, because "XXX" was easy to search for and was not going to overlap with variable names, etc.

There's a discussion here: https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2017-04-17-xxx-fixme

Dan H.

On 9/3/20 4:35 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
I'll also add that this seemed foreign when I had patches that had XXX in them I submitted to the linux folks in the early 90s. It was second nature in the BSD side of things. But I don't know if that's a Berkeley thing or a Bell Labs thing Berkeley picked up...

Warner

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 12:11 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
The earliest my quick grep could find was 4.0BSD. I didn't find it in this sense in pwb, but it was a quick grep...

xxx is used extensively in prior versions, but there it's meaning is 'placeholder' or 'don't care'. Mostly for /tmp/XXXX files, but also for things like Jxxx handles all the jump commands or dates of the form 24 Feb XXXX or stuff like that.

Warner

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:34 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more work" or
"look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.

Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB, but can't be
sure.

-- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX"

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