From: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com>
To: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2019 08:44:44 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKzdPgyyJaAudnTXb0f6BLz93BdgF_=1_akdSC6Z7oay=9mFCQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1568919029.18595.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1616 bytes --]
This was my fault, and it happened because I confronted DMR about the -u
flag for cat. He said it was there because it seemed important that cat be
writable in stdio, which was new at the time. I agreed but said the point
had been made and avoiding unnecessary flags was a higher goal. So cat was
simplified to do what it said, no more and no less, with read and write and
no nonsense.
-rob
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 4:51 AM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:
> KatolaZ:
> > We can discuss whether the split was necessary or "right" in the first
> > instance, as we could discuss whether it was good or not for cat(1) to
> > leave Murray Hill in 1979 with no options and come back from Berkley
> > with a source code doubled in size and 9 options in 1982.
>
> We needn't discuss that (though of course there are opinions and
> mine are the correct ones), but in the interest of historic accuracy,
> I should point out by 1979 (V7) cat had developed a single option -u
> to turn off stdio buffering.
>
> Sometime before 1984 or so, that option was removed, and cat was
> simplified to just
> while ((n = read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf))) > 0)
> write(1, buf, n)
> (error checking elided for clarity)
> which worked just fine for the rest of the life of the Research
> system.
>
> So it's true that BSD added needless (in my humble but correct
> opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
> Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
> Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
> (Three cats, no options)
>
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2090 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-09-19 22:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-09-19 18:50 Norman Wilson
2019-09-19 19:00 ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-09-19 20:18 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-19 20:33 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-09-19 20:39 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-19 21:46 ` Steve Nickolas
2019-09-19 21:51 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-19 20:42 ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
2019-09-19 22:44 ` Rob Pike [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-09-19 21:19 [TUHS] [OT] " Norman Wilson
2019-09-16 14:51 [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 14:57 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-16 15:14 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-16 16:10 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 16:16 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 16:26 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 16:31 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-16 16:45 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 17:19 ` KatolaZ
2019-09-16 17:37 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-16 18:09 ` [TUHS] [OT] " KatolaZ
2019-09-16 18:19 ` Jon Steinhart
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='CAKzdPgyyJaAudnTXb0f6BLz93BdgF_=1_akdSC6Z7oay=9mFCQ@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=robpike@gmail.com \
--cc=norman@oclsc.org \
--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).