[TUHS] Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year

[TUHS] Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year

[Arnold Robbins via TUHS]

Hi All.

My brother sent me the link to this article:
https://thenewstack.io/unix-co-creator-brian-kernighan-on-rust-distros-and-nixos/

IMHO you should skip over the article and move to the video at the end of
it.  I always enjoy listening to him.

Enjoy,

Arnold

[TUHS] Re: Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

Brian at 83 is better than me at 50 (I'm 63 and even worse).  What an amazing
guy.

On Tue, Sep 02, 2025 at 06:49:02AM -0600, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> My brother sent me the link to this article:
> https://thenewstack.io/unix-co-creator-brian-kernighan-on-rust-distros-and-nixos/
> 
> IMHO you should skip over the article and move to the video at the end of
> it.  I always enjoy listening to him.
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> Arnold

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS]

In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared 
yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous 
spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s

Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only 
hallucinates many wrong ones.


Many thanks,

Diomidis - https://www.spinellis.gr

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Jonathan Gray via TUHS]

On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote:
> In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday,
> bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking
> pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s
> 
> Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only hallucinates
> many wrong ones.

"The spell script originated with Steve Johnson."
From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir.
An example script is on page 150.

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Nikos Vasilakis via TUHS]

El mié, 3 sept 2025 a la(s) 3:57 a.m., Jonathan Gray via TUHS
(tuhs@tuhs.org) escribió:
>
> On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote:
> > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday,
> > bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking
> > pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s
> >
> > Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only hallucinates
> > many wrong ones.
>
> "The spell script originated with Steve Johnson."
> From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir.
> An example script is on page 150.

Also: "Steve Johnson wrote the first version of the spell in an
afternoon in 1975." from an older reference, Jon Bentley's
"Programming Pearls: A spelling Checker" (CACM, May 1st, 1985), which
offers additional analysis of this program (and is openly accessible):
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532.315102

N.

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Jonathan Gray via TUHS]

On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 06:03:33AM -0400, Nikos Vasilakis via TUHS wrote:
> El mié, 3 sept 2025 a la(s) 3:57 a.m., Jonathan Gray via TUHS
> (tuhs@tuhs.org) escribió:
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote:
> > > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday,
> > > bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking
> > > pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
> > >
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s
> > >
> > > Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only hallucinates
> > > many wrong ones.
> >
> > "The spell script originated with Steve Johnson."
> > From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir.
> > An example script is on page 150.
> 
> Also: "Steve Johnson wrote the first version of the spell in an
> afternoon in 1975." from an older reference, Jon Bentley's
> "Programming Pearls: A spelling Checker" (CACM, May 1st, 1985), which
> offers additional analysis of this program (and is openly accessible):
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532.315102
> 
> N.

The spell manual page from fifth edition is dated 2/26/74.

The script was not distributed with fifth or six edition as far as I can
tell.  Seventh edition has Doug's C version.

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Dan Cross via TUHS]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 3:47 AM Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS
<tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared
> yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous
> spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s
>
> Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only
> hallucinates many wrong ones.

As others have pointed out, it was Steve Johnson.  I wanted to mention
that he did say Steve Johnson in the video as well, though I can see
how one might (mis)hear differently; I think that's just an artifact
of the audio.

        - Dan C.

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Heinz Lycklama via TUHS]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1946 bytes --]

Grok provides a meaningful answer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Kernighan is credited with demonstrating the famous spell checking 
pipeline using Unix commands like cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm (or 
similar variations). In a classic 1970s Bell Labs video titled "The UNIX 
Operating System," he showcased pipelines for spell checking as an early 
example of Unix's power. The video uses a pipeline like makewords 
sentence | lowercase | sort | unique | mismatch to extract words, 
lowercase them, sort, remove duplicates, and compare against a 
dictionary—concepts that directly inspired modern equivalents with tr 
for translation, uniq for deduplication, and comm for comparison. This 
approach highlights Unix's philosophy of combining simple tools for 
complex tasks, and while the exact commands evolved, the core idea stems 
from Kernighan's presentation. The original spell command from 1975, 
written by Stephen C. Johnson with improvements by Douglas McIlroy, used 
a similar internal logic but not this exact pipeline.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heinz

On 9/3/2025 5:53 AM, Dan Cross via TUHS wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 3:47 AM Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS
> <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>> In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared
>> yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous
>> spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s
>>
>> Anybody knows the correct name of that person?  ChatGPT only
>> hallucinates many wrong ones.
> As others have pointed out, it was Steve Johnson.  I wanted to mention
> that he did say Steve Johnson in the video as well, though I can see
> how one might (mis)hear differently; I think that's just an artifact
> of the audio.
>
>          - Dan C.

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[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Thalia Archibald via TUHS]

On Sep 3, 2025, at 01:39, Diomidis Spinellis wrote:
> 
> In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared
> yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous
> spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s

In “The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive” (1982), Brian Kernighan
describes a similar pipeline:

   makewords sentence | lowercase | sort | unique | mismatch -�

where `sentence` is a file and the last character typed was not shown.

Spell-checking evidently teaches pipelines well, as he’s been explaining similar
formulations for a long time.

Thalia

[TUHS] Re: Who came up with the spell check pipeline?

[Thalia Archibald via TUHS]

On Sep 3, 2025, at 10:03, Thalia Archibald wrote:
> In “The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive” (1982), Brian Kernighan
> describes a similar pipeline


And that film can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0

Thalia

[TUHS] Re: Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year

[Cameron Míċeál Tyre via TUHS]

Hello Arnold,

Thank you for sharing that link. I actually sneaked a peek at some of the article but realized, as you suggested, that I should skip straight to the video. One of the most enjoyable 100 minutes. 

Mr. Kernighan just has a way of communicating that I my brain latches onto. I found it interesting that the calm and collected presentation of information that lured me into "The C Programming Language", in college 38 years ago, endured in this verbal presentation. I loved his sense of humor also.

How lucky are the students at Princeton who get an opportunity to go to one of his lectures, regardless of the subject!

Best regards,

Cameron