Dan,
I wrote:
Quiz for the occasion: which major Unix utility adopted IPL's
unprecedented expression syntax?
You correctly responded:
troff.
I suppose, in a sense, that 'dc' also fits the bill but given that that is
inherent in it's stack based nature, I doubt that is what you meant.
The notion of precedence pertains specifically to infix notation, so
postfix dc is definitely not in the running.
Idle thought about my typo: Though APL is famously inscrutable, IPL
(specifically IPL-V) outshined it in that department.
Doug
Loved or loathed for inventing APL, we lost him in 2004. The best thing
you can say about APL (I used APL\360) is that it's, err, concise...
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."
Sent to me by a friend:
https://youtu.be/vT_J6xc-Az0
There's another one there about "The C Programming Language" book
as well. And looks like more to come.
Arnold
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 12:00:08 -0600, I posted to this list a summary of the
earliest mentions of Unix in several corporate technical journals.
This morning, I made a similar search in the complete bibliographies of
29 journals on the history of computing, mathematics, and science listed at
http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/index.html#content
As might be expected, there is little mention of Unix (or Linux) in those
publications: they only ones that I found are these:
+-----------------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| filename | label | substr(title,1,80) |
+-----------------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| cryptologia.bib | Morris:1982:CFU | Cryptographic Features of the UNIX Operating System |
| annhistcomput.bib | Tomayko:1989:ACI | Anecdotes: a Critical Incident; The First Port of UNIX |
| annhistcomput.bib | Tomayko:1989:AWC | Anecdotes: The Windmill Computer---An Eyewitness Report of the Scheutz Differenc |
| ieeeannhistcomput.bib | Toomey:2010:FEU | First Edition Unix: Its Creation and Restoration |
| ieeeannhistcomput.bib | Sippl:2013:IIM | Informix: Information Management on Unix |
+-----------------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent traffic on the TUHS list has discussed early publications about
UNIX at DECUS.
The Digital Technical Journal of Digital Equipment Corporation began
publishing in August 1985, and there is a nearly complete bibliography
at
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/dectechj.bib
Change .bib to .html for a version with live hyperlinks.
The first publication there that mentions ULTRIX in its title is from
March 1986. Unix appears in a title first in Spring 1995.
The document collection at
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/decus/
doesn't appear to have much that might be related to Unix ports to DEC
hardware.
The Hewlett-Packard Journal is documented in
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/hpj.bib
The first paper recorded there that mentions Unix or HP-UX is
from March 1984.
The Intel Technical Journal is covered in those archives as well at
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/intel-tech-j.bib
but it only began relatively recently, in 1997.
The IBM Systems Journal began in 1962, and the IBM Journal of Research
and Development in 1957, and both are in those archives at
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/ibmsysj.bibhttp://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/ibmjrd.bib
In the Systems Journal, the first mention of Unix or AIX is in Fall
1979 (Unix) and then December 1987 (AIX). In the Journal of R&D, AIX
appears in January 1990, and Unix appears in abstracts sporadically,
but is in a title first in late Fall 2002.
In the Bell Systems Technical Journal, covered at
http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/bstj1970.bib
(and other decades from 1920 to 2010), the first mention of Unix in a
title is July/August 1978.
There may have been similar corporate technology journals at other
computer companies, such as CDC, Cray, Data General, English Electric,
Ferranti, Gould, Harris, NCR, Pr1me, Univac, Wang, and others, but
I've so far made no attempt to track them down and add bibliographic
coverage. Suggestions are welcome!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Horsfall:
Oh, and I also wrote many articles for AUUGN, and presented the original
Unix paper at a DECUS conference, just to stir up the VMSoids.
=====
Do you mean the first UNIX-related paper ever at a DECUS? If so,
do you mean DECUS Australia or DECUS at all? I'm pretty sure there
was UNIX-related activity in DECUS US in 1980, probably earlier, and
am quite sure there was by 1981 when I was on the sidelines of what
eventually became the UNIX SIG.
It was initially called the Special Software and Operating Systems SIG,
because DECUS US leadership always included a somewhat stodgy subgroup
who were more afraid of offending Digital's marketing people than of
serving the membership. So we ended up with a code name.
Since there were in fact Digital technical and marketing people supporting
the new SIG, it was only a couple of years before the name was fixed.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(Lived in Los Angeles and then New Jersey during that period)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:27 AM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
> I think the Berkeley guys had an underground
> pipeline to Bell labs and some stuff got out that way. :-)
>
​It was not underground at all. Tools packaged in BSD came from all over
the community. style and diction were released into the wild by
themselves before the were packaged into an AT&T USG UNIX or Research UNIX
release. It got them personally directly and had them installed at
Tektronix soon after first publishing and a talk about them at USENIX (IIRC
that was the Boulder conference in the "Black Hole" movie theatre.
Since I had a minor stake in it (as my first C program) fsck is another
good example of the path to UCB . Ted started the predecessor program
​when he was at UMich (with Bill Joy). He did his OYOC year and later a
full PhD at CMU. He was one of my lab partners in his OYOC year. fsck
was a we know it now was done during that time ( and I helped him a bit).
He was bring the sources back and forth from Summit to CMU (at the time in
an RK05 or sometimes a bootable DOS tape image of one - I may still have
one of these). I believe he gave a copy of the sources very early to wnj
-- which is how it ended up in 4.1BSD. I don't think it was in the
original 3.0 or 4.0 packages as it was not in V5, V6 or V7 either. I
believe it was released in PWB 2.0 - not sure and Minnie does not seem to
have them.
I'm pretty the SCCS and cpio sources came through one of the PWB releases
(1 or 2) that UCB got from AT&T.
​Clem​