From: hans at hanshq.net (Hans Wennborg)
Subject: [TUHS] Why do compress(1) and pack(1) use the .Z / .z extension?
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 13:59:06 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <b69e0e88-ed76-da93-12e7-4d36144327c3@hanshq.net> (raw)
I'm trying to find out why compress(1) uses .Z as filename extension.
My theory is that it was inspired by pack(1), which uses the .z extension.
However, I haven't been able to find any info on why pack(1) uses that
extension. Does anyone here know?
Some searching led me to [1] which is a man page for pack from AUSAM.
It's written by Steve Zucker in 1975, so perhaps the extension is z for
Zucker?
Was Zucker's pack(1) the first, though? This message [2] talks about a
Bell version.
Does anyone here have any information about this?
Cheers,
Hans
1. https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=AUSAM/doc/man/man1/pack.1
2. https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1984/0319.html
next reply other threads:[~2020-11-27 12:59 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-11-27 12:59 hans [this message]
2020-11-27 15:57 ` cowan
2020-11-27 17:16 ` clemc
2020-11-27 19:00 ` imp
2020-11-27 19:17 ` clemc
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