From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.2 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,DKIM_VALID_EF,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [IPv6:2600:3c01:e000:146::1]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 88CAC22127 for ; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:06:06 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5179E43683; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 21:05:58 +1000 (AEST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=tuhs.org; s=dkim; t=1719745558; h=from:from:reply-to:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date: message-id:message-id:to:to:cc:mime-version:mime-version: content-type:content-type:in-reply-to:in-reply-to: references:references:list-id:list-help:list-owner:list-unsubscribe: list-subscribe:list-post; bh=sf1+luSkP93QFbmr3vJuw1SPS7cWsUot6UaZkNrB/XM=; b=h1VrJpNgbss2CtDBLjaW2bbEMICcajg8aZDefAvn2v3bnPh/GyAQCgQHNqT1bpfMu67+au m4LYgihQri7QiDC+5KUOhIKEWQWrAzw/Tx8U3MESnfOBfzAXO7I+v1SEfO+SPXhUahp+P8 hwdy+f1bcKnUl5WHJNKwATpxWWAvxbc= Received: from mailout2.ceti.pl (mailout2.ceti.pl [62.121.128.42]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id EA72443332 for ; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 21:05:46 +1000 (AEST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mailout2.ceti.pl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 250DCC7D3 for ; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:05:44 +0200 (CEST) X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at mailout.ceti.pl Received: from mailout2.ceti.pl ([62.121.128.42]) by localhost (mailout.ceti.pl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id Lqah9vRw8S31 for ; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:05:43 +0200 (CEST) Received: from tau1.ceti.pl (tau.ceti.pl [62.121.128.11]) by mailout2.ceti.pl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 56808C6D0 for ; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:05:43 +0200 (CEST) Received: by tau1.ceti.pl (Postfix, from userid 3727) id 37C801FD0; Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:05:43 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2024 13:05:43 +0200 To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Message-ID: References: <20240606095502.AD4EE210F4@orac.inputplus.co.uk> <20240606194901.F5bDRUkh@steffen%sdaoden.eu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Message-ID-Hash: VBMKBTWCX3ZTDUNSLRYBCZ5TUI7X7DJ4 X-Message-ID-Hash: VBMKBTWCX3ZTDUNSLRYBCZ5TUI7X7DJ4 X-MailFrom: rtomek@ceti.pl X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] syscalls, records in pipe [was: Re: most direct Unix descendant] List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: From: Tomasz Rola via TUHS Reply-To: Tomasz Rola On Sun, Jun 09, 2024 at 03:00:53AM -0500, Ed Bradford wrote: > Excellent responses here. Brings back so many great memories. > > My 1 cent would be to ask the question: > > Which of today's Unix variants (Linux, BSD, AIX, Cygwin, ...) is > closest to the philosophy of the Ken-Denis-Doug versions of V6 Unix? > > All the variants I see today suffer from "complexification" - a John Mashey > term. > Documentation of commands today has grown 5 to 10 fold for each > command in /usr/bin. V7 had less than 64 well documented > system calls. Today's Linux, AIX, and others have how many? > I don't know. Well, here you are (on my more or less updated ParrotOS, a Debian derivative) (watch for insider line break): -$ man 2 syscalls | awk '/Sys.*Kern.*Not/,/On many plat/ {if ( $1 ~ /.*\(2\)/ ) print $1;}' | sort | uniq | wc -l 468 > The concept of producing a stream of text as the output of a program > that does simple jobs well has been replaced by "power-shell" thinking > of passing binary objects rather than text between program - a decidedly > non-portable idea. I guess an analogue of this could be made - for example, when I say 'dpkg -s scm' it prints: -$ dpkg -s scm Package: scm Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: interpreters Installed-Size: 2294 Maintainer: Debian Scheme Dream Team Architecture: amd64 Version: 5f3-4 Depends: slib, libc6 (>= 2.34), libncurses6 (>= 6), libreadline8 (>= 6.0), libtinfo6 (>= 6), libx11-6 Suggests: r5rs-doc Description: Scheme language interpreter SCM conforms to the R5RS (Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme) and IEEE P1178 specifications, and is portable across many architectures and operating systems. It additionally includes a set of popular Common Lisp functions, POSIX and X Windows integration, and the Hobbit scheme-to-C compiler. Homepage: https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/SCM.html I believe the format is easy to grasp and I think there is an RFC for this, but cannot quickly find the number. But the cost - blowing and puffing up every and each of the sh tool. [...] > Unix brought automation to the forefront of possibilities. Using Unix, > anyone could do it - even that kid in Jurassic Park. Today, everything > is GUI and nothing can > be automated easily or, most of the time, not at all. > > Unix is an ever shrinking oasis in a desert of non-automation and > complexity. > > It is the loss of automation possibilities that frustrates me the most. When I became fascinated with Unix while a student still, I could not find anybody else drawn to the idea of automating stuff to be done, like Unix enabled. OTOH, I never asked people much about what they were thinking. My impression, however, was that Windows 3.1 had already owned their minds and whatever Unix was, it did not concerned anybody too much. Clients used Windows, future bosses wanted Windows. Have 500 thousands lines in a file? Read it into Excel and massage it there. Have fifty files, each 500000 lines worth? Oy, repeat fifty times, manually. Find an intern slaving body and automate with him, of him, on him, however you call it. In a way, it was and still is better than all advances of modern so called AI - after all, interns do really care about results. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **