From: George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org>
To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Where did the "~" come from
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2020 10:44:34 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn2daDRmR=xWzDQRkrO0x9SoAq3NHnCK84-XWGUd3sK9rg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2011190931000.48674@aneurin.horsfall.org>
A related but different "thing" is when the cd activity became a
pushdown stack of 2 (is it more? I never bothered checking)
somebody realised going "there and back again" was innately useful.
(I will never forget working on systems which had cd-moral-equivalent
<down> and no cd-moral-equivalent <up> but having cd-moral-equivalent
$HOME making all directory traversals downward, or back to your
personal root)
sorry for thread hijack.
-G
On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 8:42 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2020, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> > In our exchange, someone observed suggested that Joy might have picked
> > it up because the HOME key was part of the tilde key on the ADM3A, which
> > were popular at UCB [i.e. the reason hjkl are the movement keys on vi is
> > the were embossed on the top of those keys on the ADM3A]. It also was
> > noted that the ASR-33 lacks a ~ key on its keyboard. But Lesk
> > definitely needed something to represent a remote user's home directory
> > because each system was different, so he was forced to use something.
>
> The ADM-3A was one of the best terminals ever made.
>
> > It was also noted that there was plenty of cross-pollination going on as
> > students and researchers moved from site to site, so it could have been BTL
> > to UCB, vice-versa, or some other path altogether.
> >
> > So two questions for this august body are:
> > 1. Where did the ~ as $HOME convention come to UNIX?
>
> Gawd... I think I saw it in PWB, but I'm likely wrong.
>
> > 2. Did UNIX create the idiom, or was there an earlier system such as CTSS,
> > TENEX, ITS, MTS, TSS, or the like supported it?
>
> No idea. but given that Unix inherited a lot of stuff....
>
> -- Dave
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-11-19 0:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-11-18 22:25 Clem Cole
2020-11-18 22:41 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-11-19 0:44 ` George Michaelson [this message]
2020-11-19 13:45 ` Ron Natalie
2020-11-19 16:16 ` Chet Ramey
2020-11-19 15:50 ` Warner Losh
2020-11-19 17:22 ` Mary Ann Horton
2020-11-19 18:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-11-19 20:02 ` Michael Kjörling
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