From: segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Of flags and keyletters
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:59:00 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <wq_m2T3HC8HIZL6MD8jrZ62JVFjeX-tdX95AoKnI1royl72LviCTfa0kgTA5fwr2_isewCBQ_0ahI84KWm-ZHJGhQbzUsCB4otnRii1ikwg=@protonmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2403010407290.37577@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Thursday, February 29th, 2024 at 9:21 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
> Just recollecting old memories: why did AT&T refer to "flags" as
> "keyletters" in its SysV documentation? Some sort of denial of
> Ed5/6/7/BSD's very existence?
>
> The one good they did was the TTY driver...
>
> -- Dave, who used to work for a SysVile shop
Curious Dave if you have a particular piece of documentation in mind? I'm mostly finding the term "keyletter" in SCCS manpages and pages related to the lp print system. This nomenclature appears to go back as far as Release 4.0 of SCCS/PWB on February 18, 1977, it is also used throughout the PIB regarding this release.
Maybe a nomenclature practice by some of the USG/PWB-side folks that slowly crept in? Fwiw I generally see command-line bits as "options" throughout much documentation, with flag and option being used quite interchangeably, I don't get many hits at all in the 1983 System V manpage sources for "keyletter".
- Matt G.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-02-29 17:59 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-02-29 17:21 [TUHS] " Dave Horsfall
2024-02-29 17:59 ` segaloco via TUHS [this message]
2024-03-01 5:30 ` [TUHS] " Dave Horsfall
2024-03-01 5:44 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-03-01 15:49 [TUHS] " Douglas McIlroy
2024-03-01 16:23 ` [TUHS] " Steve Nickolas
2024-03-01 19:44 ` Paul Winalski
2024-03-01 16:56 ` Bakul Shah via TUHS
2024-03-02 0:33 ` silas poulson via TUHS
2024-03-02 18:53 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2024-03-02 18:24 ` Paul Winalski
2024-03-02 18:35 ` Warner Losh
2024-03-02 22:14 Noel Chiappa
2024-03-03 17:38 ` Aaron
2024-03-03 17:52 ` Larry McVoy
2024-03-03 19:28 ` Aaron
2024-03-03 21:24 ` Rich Salz
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='wq_m2T3HC8HIZL6MD8jrZ62JVFjeX-tdX95AoKnI1royl72LviCTfa0kgTA5fwr2_isewCBQ_0ahI84KWm-ZHJGhQbzUsCB4otnRii1ikwg=@protonmail.com' \
--to=tuhs@tuhs.org \
--cc=segaloco@protonmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).