Doug McIlroy asks about the Rosetta Stone table relating TOPS-20 commands to Unix command in my ``Unix for TOPS-20 Users'' document: >> I was puzzled, though, by the Unix command "leave", which is >> not in the manuals I edited, nor is it in Linux. What does >> (or did) it do? I reread that 1987 document this morning, and found a few small mistakes, but on the whole, I still agree with what I wrote 34 years ago, and I'm pleased that almost everything there about Unix still applies today. I confess that I had forgotten about the TOPS-20 ALERT command and its Unix equivalent, leave. As Doug noted, leave is not in Linux systems, but it still exists in the BSD world, in DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and their many derivatives. From a bleeding-edge FreeBSD 14 system, I find % man leave LEAVE(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual LEAVE(1) NAME leave – remind you when you have to leave SYNOPSIS leave [[+]hhmm] DESCRIPTION The leave utility waits until the specified time, then reminds you that you have to leave. You are reminded 5 minutes and 1 minute before the actual time, at the time, and every minute thereafter. When you log off, leave exits just before it would have printed the next message. ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe@acm.org beebe@computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------