[TUHS] speaking of early C compilers

[beebe@math.utah.edu (Nelson H. F. Beebe)]

Norman Wilson writes today:

>> ...
>> -- Dennis, in one of his retrospective papers (possibly that
>> in the 1984 all-UNIX BLTJ issue, but I don't have it handy at
>> the moment) remarked about ch becoming chdir but couldn't
>> remember why that happened.
>> ...

The reference below contains on page 5 this comment by Dennis:

>> (Incidentally, chdir was spelled ch; why this was expanded when we
>>  went to the PDP-11 I don't remember)

@String{pub-PH                  = "Pren{\-}tice-Hall"}
@String{pub-PH:adr              = "Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458, USA"}

@Book{ATT:AUS86-2,
  author =       "AT{\&T}",
  key =          "ATT",
  title =        "{AT}{\&T UNIX} System Readings and Applications",
  volume =       "II",
  publisher =    pub-PH,
  address =      pub-PH:adr,
  pages =        "xii + 324",
  year =         "1986",
  ISBN =         "0-13-939845-7",
  ISBN-13 =      "978-0-13-939845-2",
  LCCN =         "QA76.76.O63 U553 1986",
  bibdate =      "Sat Oct 28 08:25:58 2000",
  bibsource =    "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
  xxnote =       "NB: special form AT{\&T} required to get correct
                 alpha-style labels.",
}

That chapter of that book comes from this paper:

@String{j-ATT-BELL-LAB-TECH-J   = "AT\&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal"}

@Article{Ritchie:1984:EUT,
  author =       "Dennis M. Ritchie",
  title =        "Evolution of the {UNIX} time-sharing system",
  journal =      j-ATT-BELL-LAB-TECH-J,
  volume =       "63",
  number =       "8 part 2",
  pages =        "1577--1593",
  month =        oct,
  year =         "1984",
  CODEN =        "ABLJER",
  DOI =          "http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1984.tb00054.x"
  ISSN =         "0748-612X",
  ISSN-L =       "0748-612X",
  bibdate =      "Fri Nov 12 09:17:39 2010",
  bibsource =    "Compendex database;
                 http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/bstj1980.bib",
  abstract =     "This paper presents a brief history of the early
                 development of the UNIX operating system. It
                 concentrates on the evolution of the file system, the
                 process-control mechanism, and the idea of pipelined
                 commands. Some attention is paid to social conditions
                 during the development of the system.",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
  fjournal =     "AT\&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal",
  topic =        "computer systems programming",
}

Incidentally, on modern systems with tcsh and csh, I use both chdir
and cd; the long form does the bare directory change, whereas the
short form is an alias that also updates the shell prompt string and
the terminal window title.

I also have a personal alias "xd" (eXchange Directory) that is short
for the tcsh & bash sequence "pushd !*; cd .", allowing easy jumping
back and forth between pairs of directories, with updating of prompts
and window titles.

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