- COFF - www.tuhs.org

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

List members may be interested in this new article published today: Steven M. Bellovin Netnews: The Origin Story IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 47(1) 7--21 Jan/Mar 2025 https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2024.3420896 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 month

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[TUHS] What would early alternatives to C have been?

by Douglas McIlroy

Beating a nearly dead horse, I'm shipping this to COFF instead of TUHS to which it responds. > I find > > if (a == b && c == d) > > perfectly reasonable, but > > if ((a == b) && (c == d)) > > to be just silly. Amusing. IT's odd that no one has mentioned the use of spaces for grouping. When the operands of == are simple, I prefer to vary the spacingy spacing. It's less intrusive than extra parentheses and just as clear. if(a==b && c==d) or if( a==b && c==d ) K&R usually flank every infix operator with spaces, unlike classical mathematical usage, where spacing reflects operator precedence. I usually write a*b + c*d, not a * b + c * d, which wantonly flattens the parse tree. Here's an example from K&R, where uniform spacing hampers intelligibility. for (i = 0; s[i] >= '0' && s[i] <= '9'; ++i) n = 10 * n + (s[i] - '0'); The "extra" parens in the second line admirably show the intent of the subtraction. Other groupings are not so well indicated. I would write it like this: for(i=0; s[i]>='0' && s[i]<='9'; ++i) n = 10*n + (s[i]-'0'); (I'll admit that the juxtaposition ]>= is less than perspicuous.) Long identifiers constitute a level of grouping that takes precedence even over multiplication. So I may flank long identifiers with spaces. I suppose then + in a sum of products might deserve double spaces. That's probably a bridge too far, but double spaces after the semicolons in the "for" statement above seem justifiable K&R aren't absolutely rigid about spacing. In the following oddly mixed specimen, the first of three operands in a conjunction is spaced tightly, but the third is not; I guess they feel about != the way I do about long identifiers. i<lim-1 && (c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF The middle conjunct is a challenge. I'd probably squeeze out the spaces. But I might instead try to hold it together with outer parens. Doug

1 month, 1 week

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Make your own virtual punchcard

by Douglas McIlroy

Mention of punched cards reminded me of some 1960s trivia. There were two formats for binary code on punched cards for IBM 700-series machines. In "row binary" two 36-bit words filled each of the 12 rows from bottom to top. In "column binary" successive thirds of a word ran downward in each of 3 successive columns. Bob Morris wondered what is the order of the permutation performed in row-to-column conversion. The order of the row-to-column permutation turns out to be 172. There are five cycles of that length plus an oddball of length 4. My souvenir card shows the oddball. If you convert a cycle from row binary to column binary, the output is the same as the input.* Each cycle is also invariant under 180-degree rotation.The 4-cycle is a simple parallelogram. One of the 5-cycles lines up in periodic diagonals. The other cycles show no easily described structure. The images of the two described cycles should be viewed in a fixed-width font. The punches in the 4-cycle are numbered in cyclic order. I keep a few souvenir punched cards. One bears that 4-cycle. * Well, almost the same. The first word on the card contains control information whose layout differs in the two formats. Doug ........................................................................ ........................................................................ ...........................................3............................ ........................................................................ ..............2......................................................... ........................................................................ ........................................................................ .........................................................4.............. ........................................................................ ............................1........................................... ........................................................................ ........................................................................ ..X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.... ....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.. .X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X ...X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X... X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X. ..X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.... ....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.. .X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X ...X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X... X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X. ..X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.... ....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X..

1 month, 2 weeks

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Make your own virtual punchcard

by Charles H Sauer (he/him)

https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the movers from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I had kept those boxes as souvenirs.] Charlie -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/mas.to: CharlesHSauer

1 month, 2 weeks

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Kids these days....

by norman＠oclsc.org

Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor.

2 months, 1 week

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Re: Kids these days.... External

by Douglas McIlroy

Besides the first day I sat at the PDP-7 console, one of the biggest Unix thrills came when when I logged in remotely to the new Cray at Bell Labs. Here was a monster machine with a manual I had never seen, and I was able to compile and run a program on it at the first try. God bless sh, ed, cc, and a.out. Doug

2 months, 1 week

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Kids these days....

by Dan Cross

File under "What a Drag it is Getting Old".... My kids have now reached the age where they have started to mock me. Not only must I contend with the fact that I'm not cool anymore (if, indeed, I ever really was) but I also realize that I have no idea what the slang they're using means. None whatsoever; it's all unintelligible gibberish to me. They clearly revel in my ignorance. But I have found a way to get even: I have started spelling out commands verbally, punctuated with random words, and acting like this has more general meaning (and like, you're just not hip with the rizz if you don't understand). For example, "Yo, tar x v; on cat. Sig Pipe, amirite?" I'll throw one of these out, and they stare at me with faux comprehension while I silently, inwardly gloat. Just thought I'd share. - Dan C.

2 months, 1 week

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Source for a vaguely Bourne-like shell, no signals

by Warren Toomey

Hi all, this is a pretty weird question to ask. I've been extending the RISC-V version of xv6 to have a decent libc and some userland programs: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/xv6-riscv-fuzix There's a minimalist shell and my own 'wish' shell; neither have any scripting capability. Also, as it stands there are no signals implemented. I'd love a Bourne-ish shell to write shell scripts, but I've had a hard time finding one that I can snip out the signal handling code. If you have any suggestions, please met me know! Thanks, Warren

3 months, 1 week

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Re: [TUHS] "Webster's Second on the Head of a Pin"?

by sjenkin＠canb.auug.org.au

Not dissimilar work at AT&T Research ~2000 - compressing fixed-length records, better than gzip, +30% for similar compute time. ‘pzip’ - Adam Bushman & Glen Fowler <https://web.archive.org/web/20041019142227/http://www.research.att.com/~gsf…> Later work by others, building on ‘pzip’ ,claims ‘100x’. > On 30 Dec 2024, at 00:44, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote: > > I can supply a copy if no one else has beaten me to it. > > Ron Hardin subsequently pushed the limit even further. Unfortunately, > I do not have a record of that work. > > Doug > > On Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 9:54 PM Royce Williams <royce(a)techsolvency.com> wrote: >> >> Someone I know is seeking the original version of an internal Bell Labs memo from 1974 titled "Webster's Second on the Head of a Pin" by Morris and Thompson. The topic appears to be related to improving the speed of lookups or search. It's cited in a few papers as "Unpublished Technical Memo, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 1974." All I can find online is citations. Any leads appreciated! >> >> -- >> Royce Other links: This repository included ksh-93 sources Glen Fowlers’ downloads <https://web.archive.org/web/20130514131958/http://www2.research.att.com/~gs…> Later AT&T Research page with Software downloads <https://web.archive.org/web/20090626002505/http://public.research.att.com/i…> THE AT&T AST OPENSOURCE SOFTWARE COLLECTION 2000 <https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/f…> Github Repo for AST - I couldn’t make these compile <https://github.com/att/ast/tree/master> KSH93 <https://github.com/ksh93> -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

3 months, 3 weeks

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DEC computer Christmas carols

by Paul Winalski

The PDP-10 had an alarm bell that could be rung under program control. When the TOPS-10 operating system crashed, it displayed a numeric code on the console indicating the reason for the crash. This was called a "stopcode" and is the equivalent of a Unix panic. It also rang the alarm bell. DDT (Dynamic Debugging Tool) was the primary debugger for TOPS-10. PPN (Project-Programmer Number) was used for system security. Each user account was assigned by number to a Project, and within that Project a unique Programmer Number. The low numbers (such as [7,3]) were usually privileged accounts. So here we have the Christmas carol Stopcode Bells, to the tune of Jingle Bells: ========== Stopcode bells, stopcode bells, stopcode all the way. Oh what fun it is to crash the system night and day. Stopcode bells, stopcode bells, stopcode all the way. Oh what fun it is to crash the system night and day. Poking through the core With a bug in DDT Change your PPN To [7,3]. Halt somebody's job. Make them scream and shout. Oh what fun it is to log The operator out. ========== This is one that I wrote while I worked in DEC's software development tools department. Around Christmas time the first baselevels of VAX/VMS Version 3.0 were being sent to alpha test. The engineering departments got first crack at the new system and so were the first to encounter bugs and design problems. VMS Version 3 had been a very ambitious project and was eventually split up into Version 3A (released as Version 3.0) and Version 3B (released as Version 4.0). There was a lot of grumbling by groups whose new features got put into 3B and thus delayed. The early baselevels of 3A broke the VAX C runtime library. So here we have Version 3 is Coming to Town: ========== You'd better work hard You'd better code fast. The system you use Just ain't gonna last. Version 3 is coming to town. They fixed some old bugs And put new ones in, Added some features They think will win. Version 3 is coming to town. There's so many new features. Too bad we can't use C. And the things that we most wanted Were deferred until 3B. You'd better work hard You'd better code fast. The system you use Just ain't gonna last. Version 3 is coming to town. ========= -Paul W.

4 months, 1 week

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