TUHS January 2017

tuhs@tuhs.org

77 participants
95 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Tony Finch > The other classic of Algol 68 literature No roundup of classic Algol 68 literature would be complete without Hoare's "The Emperor's Old Clothes". I assume everyone here has read it, but on the off-chance there is someone who hasn't, a copy is here: http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs422/2014/bib/hoare81emperor.pdf and I cannot recommend it more highly. Noel

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] SunOS vs Linux

by Clem Cole

On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 11:17 AM, ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com <https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=rminnich@gmail.com>> wrote: > Larry, had Sun open sourced SunOS, as you fought so hard to make happen, > Linux might not have happened as it did. SunOS was really good. Chalk up > another win for ATT! > FWIW: I disagree. For details look at my discussion of rewriting Linux in RUST <https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-possible-advantageous-to-rewrite-the-Linu…> on quora. But a quick point is this .... Linux original took off (and was successful) not because of GPL, but in spite of it and later the GPL would help it. But it was not the GPL per say that made Linux vs BSD vs SunOS et al. What made Linux happen was the BSDi/UCB vs AT&T case. At the time, a lot of hackers (myself included) thought the case was about *copyright*. It was not, it was about *trade secret* and the ideas around UNIX. * i.e.* folks like, we "mentally contaminated" with the AT&T Intellectual Property. When the case came, folks like me that were running 386BSD which would later begat FreeBSD et al, got scared. At that time, *BSD (and SunOS) were much farther along in the development and stability. But .... may of us hought Linux would insulate us from losing UNIX on cheap HW because their was not AT&T copyrighted code in it. Sadly, the truth is that if AT&T had won the case, *all UNIX-like systems* would have had to be removed from the market in the USA and EU [NATO-allies for sure]. That said, the fact the *BSD and Linux were in the wild, would have made it hard to enforce and at a "Free" (as in beer) price it may have been hard to make it stick. But that it was a misunderstanding of legal thing that made Linux "valuable" to us, not the implementation. If SunOS has been available, it would not have been any different. It would have been thought of based on the AT&T IP, but trade secret and original copyright. Clem

7 years, 9 months

nice interview with Steve Bourne

by Arnold Robbins

Just came across this: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/279011/-z_programming_languages_bou… >From 2009. There are links to other interviews about Unix stuff as well. Arnold

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

by Rudi Blom

>Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2017 08:45:47 -0700 >From: arnold(a)skeeve.com >To: rochkind(a)basepath.com >Cc: tuhs(a)tuhs.org >Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code >Message-ID: <201701091545.v09FjlXE027448(a)freefriends.org> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > >I remember the Bournegol well; I did some hacking on the BSD shell. > >In general, it wasn't too unusual for people from Pascal backgrounds to >do similar things, e.g. > > #define repeat do { > #define until(cond) } while (! (cond)) > >(I remember for me personally that do...while sure looked weird for. >my first few years of C programming. :-) > >(Also, I would not recommend doing that; I'm just noting that >people often did do stuff like that.) When the Philips computer division worked on MPX (multi-processor UNIX) in late 80tish they had an include file 'syntax.h' which did a lot of that Pascal-like mapping. Here part of it: /* For a full explanation see the file syntax.help */ #define IF if( #define THEN ){ #define ELSIF }else if( #define ELSE }else{ #define ENDIF } #define NOT ! #define AND && #define OR || #define CASE switch( #define OF ){ #define ENDCASE break;} #define WHEN break;case #define CWHEN case #define IMPL : #define COR :case #define BREAK break #define WHENOTHERS break;default #define CWHENOTHERS default #define SELECT do{{ #define SWHEN }if( #define SIMPL ){ #define ENDSELECT }}while(0) #define SCOPE { #define ENDSCOPE } #define BLOCK { #define ENDBLOCK } #define FOREVER for(;; #define FOR for( #define SKIP #define COND ; #define STEP ; #define LOOP ){ #define ENDLOOP } #define NULLOOP ){} #define WHILE while( #define DO do{ #define UNTIL }while(!( #define ENDDO )) #define EXITWHEN(e) if(e)break #define CONTINUE continue #define RETURN return #define GOTO goto

7 years, 9 months

the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines

by Larry McVoy

I was in building 5 at Sun when they were switching to SVr4 which became Solaris 2.0 (I think). Building 5 housed the kernel people at Sun. John Pope was the poor bastard who got stuck with doing the bring up. Everyone hated him for doing it, we all wanted it to fail. I was busting my ass on something in SunOS 4.x and I was there late into the night, frequently to around midnight or beyond. So was John. We became close friends. We both moved to San Francisco and ended up commuting to Mountain View together (and hit the bars together). John was just at my place, here's a few pictures for those who might be interested. He's a great guy, got stuck with a shitty job. http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/2016-pope/ --lm

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

by Paul McJones

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 6:00 PM,"Steve Johnson" <scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote: > > I can certainly confirm that Steve Bourne not only knew Algol 68, he > was quite an evangelist for it. Bourne had led the Algol68C development team at Cambridge until 1975. See http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol68impl/#Algol68C .

7 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

by Doug McIlroy

> if-fi and case-esac notation from Algol came to shell [via Steve Bourne] There was some pushback which resulted in the strange compromise of if-fi, case-esac, do-done. Alas, the details have slipped from memory. Help, scj? doug

7 years, 9 months

2.11BSD source code cross-reference

by Warren Toomey

All, I'm not sure if you know of Walter Müller's work at implementing a PDP-11 on FPGAs: https://wfjm.github.io/home/w11/. He sent me this e-mail with an excellent source code cross-reference of the 2.11BSD kernel: P.S.: long time ago I wrote a source code viewer for 2.11BSD and OS with a similar file and directory layout. I made a few tune-ups lately and wrote some sort of introduction, see https://wfjm.github.io/home/ouxr/ Might be helpful for you in case you inspect 2.11BSD source code. Cheers all, Warren

7 years, 9 months

Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

by Walter F.J. Mueller

There was thread 'Unix stories' were Stephen Bourne played role. Here another story about Stephen Bourne. He worked first on Algol 68, than joined the Unix team at Bell labs and wrote sh and adb. It's well known that the if-fi and case-esac notation from Algol came to shell syntax this way. Maybe less know is that Bourne tried as hard as he could to make the C code of sh and adb look like Algol, with the help of preprocessor macros. I stumbled across this when I looked into the 2.11BSD code base some time ago. Look at http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/sh/main.c.html http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/adb/main.c.html to enjoy C with an Algol-look. The definitions are in http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/sh/mac.h.html http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/bin/adb/defs.h.html Cheers, Walter

7 years, 9 months

Resurrecting the B (which came before C) programming language

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

I was amused this morning to see a post on the tack-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net mailing list (TACK = The Amsterdam Compiler Kit) today from David Given, who writes: >> ... >> ... I took some time off from thinking about register allocation (ugh) >> and ported the ABC B compiler to the ACK. It's now integrated into the >> system and everything. >> >> B is Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie's untyped programming language >> which later acquired types and turned into K&R C. Everything's a machine >> word, and pointers are *word* address, not byte addresses. >> >> The port's a bit clunky and doesn't generate good code, but it works and >> it passes its own tests. It runs on all supported backends. There's not >> much standard library, though. >> >> Example: >> >> https://github.com/davidgiven/ack/blob/default/examples/hilo.b >> >> (Also, in the process it found lots of bugs in the PowerPC mcg backend, >> now fixed, as well as several subtle bugs in the PowerPC ncg backend; so >> that's good. I'm pretty sure that this is the only B compiler for the >> PowerPC in existence.) >> ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - 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: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 years, 9 months

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TUHS January 2017