Thank you for the correction. Having only used Unix from Seventh Edition on, research-editions only, I have never used head(1) and didn't realize it was written so early. On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 12:38 PM Clem Cole wrote: > Noel. Pls check the TUHS archives and I think you will see sed does yet > exist in 6th edition when Joy wrote head in 1977. Certainly not yet at > UCB. > > On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 9:34 PM Noel Hunt wrote: > >> > But note that when wnj wrote head(1), Joy followed the >> > famous `Unix Philosophy' of doing one (small) job >> > well. Which means he did not add a feature *i.e.* >> > abusing, an old program, like cat(1), and add some new >> > switch to it that that told the program stop outputting >> > after n lines. Instead Joy wrote a simple new tool. >> >> He didn't need to abuse any existing program by adding new >> flags or the like; unless I am mistaken, `sed Nq', for some >> number `N', does exactly what `head -N' would do on a single >> file, obviating the very need for head(1). >> >>> -- > Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual >