From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>
Cc: TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 21:48:58 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W6dxBJsABcf6V84FToMhBwwxLkSroyqV5ODpEaBGt_7sw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <21D1C841C4310FE1829023B424252295.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
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On Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 9:37 PM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:
> Clem Cole:
>
> > Apologies to TUHS - other than please don't think Fortran did not
> > impact UNIX and its peers.
>
> Fortran had an important (if indirect) influence in early Unix. From
> Dennis's memories of the early days of Unix on the PDP-7:
>
> Soon after TMG became available, Thompson decided that we could not
> pretend to offer a real computing service without Fortran, so he sat
> down to write a Fortran in TMG. As I recall, the intent to handle
> Fortran lasted about a week. What he produced instead was a definition
> of and a compiler for the new language B.
>
> (The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing System; see the 1984
> UNIX System issue of the BLTJ for the whole thing, or just read
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html)
>
> Now let's move on to the name `rc'. Not the shell, but the
> usage as part of a file name. Those two characters appear
> at the end of the many annoying, and mostly pointless, configuration
> files that litter one's home directory these days, apparently
> copied from the old system-startup script /etc/rc as if the
> name means `startup commands' (or something beginning with r,
> I suppose, instead of startup). But I recall reading somewhere
> that it just stood for `runcom,' a Multics-derived term for what
> we now call a shell script.
>
> I can't find a citation to back up that claim, though. Anyone
> else remember where to look?
>
Not a citation, either, but I believe the original RUNCOM came from CTSS (
https://multicians.org/shell.html), and MDN-4 on the design of the Multics
shell mentions the term and MDN-5 goes into detail here.
Newer Multics calls this "exec_com", as in the shell startup file `
start_up.ec` that Multics users have in their login directories.
https://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics/doc/info_segments/exec_com.info
- Dan C.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-06-13 1:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 25+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-06-13 1:37 Norman Wilson
2023-06-13 1:41 ` Rob Pike
2023-06-13 1:48 ` Dan Cross [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2023-06-13 12:10 Douglas McIlroy
2023-06-13 10:03 Rudi Blom
2023-06-13 0:46 Douglas McIlroy
2023-06-12 18:22 [TUHS] " ron minnich
2023-06-12 18:29 ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2023-06-12 18:53 ` Clem Cole
2023-06-12 19:45 ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-06-12 20:03 ` Chris Pinnock via TUHS
2023-06-12 20:22 ` Dan Cross
2023-06-12 20:28 ` Chris Pinnock via TUHS
2023-06-12 20:58 ` Paul Winalski
2023-06-12 21:32 ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-06-12 21:28 ` Anthony Martin
2023-06-12 20:25 ` Steve Nickolas
2023-06-12 20:17 ` Dave Horsfall
2023-06-12 21:31 ` Clem Cole
2023-06-12 21:39 ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-06-12 22:39 ` Clem Cole
2023-06-12 22:50 ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-06-12 23:04 ` Paul Winalski
2023-06-12 22:09 ` Paul Winalski
2023-06-13 5:28 ` Dave Horsfall
2023-06-13 16:37 ` ron minnich
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