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6532 discussions

by Douglas McIlroy

>> info groff gives semantics for including nonempty files that don't end >> with newline. Such files violate the Posix definition of text file. >> >> Although groff is certainly justified in providing semantics for >> non-Posix text, I suggest that it should warn when it does so. > That's true but I'm hesitant to put groff in the business of wagging its > finger at users feeding it non-strictly-conforming text files when doing > so doesn't cause it any problems. Causing groff problems is an odd criterion. The fact that groff will paste files together unless the first happens to end in a newline is a sign of groff 's internals, not of the underlying problem. A newline missing at the end of a file is typically a symptom of either the incaution of some other program (perhaps an editor) or of a file having been unexpectedly truncated (as by a program abort). The latter cause is common enough to justify warning always, not just about cases that are inconvenient to groff. Groff is what it is, but if the treatment of absent final newlines were up for grabs, I'd argue for the more common solution: in all cases insert a newline and warn. Doug

3 months

Marc Rochkind's article on SCCS has been published

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

The March 2025 issue of an IEEE journal has published Marc Rochkind's article on SCCS. TUHS list members discussed a draft version of the article last fall. Here is its BibTeX entry: @String{j-IEEE-TRANS-SOFTW-ENG = "IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering"} @Article{Rochkind:2025:RSC, author = "Marc J. Rochkind", title = "A Retrospective on the {Source Code Control System}", journal = j-IEEE-TRANS-SOFTW-ENG, volume = "51", number = "3", pages = "695--699", month = mar, year = "2025", CODEN = "IESEDJ", DOI = "https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2024.3524947", ISSN = "0098-5589 (print), 1939-3520 (electronic)", ISSN-L = "0098-5589", bibdate = "Tue Mar 25 08:57:56 2025", bibsource = "https://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/ieeetranssoftweng2020.bib", acknowledgement = ack-nhfb, ajournal = "IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng.", fjournal = "IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering", journal-URL = "https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=32", keywords = "Codes; Control systems; CSSC; Mainframes; Merging; Programming; SCCS; Software; software configuration management; Software development management; software engineering; Software engineering; software reliability; Software reliability; software tools; Source coding; source control management; version control systems", } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 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 - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 months

Moore's Law: PDP-11 1970 vs TI's low-power small chip for under 20 cents.

by sjenkin＠canb.auug.org.au

The specs aren’t that quite equivalent: 1Kb SRAM vs 48K core memory, 32-bit vs 16-bit CPU and 24Mhz vs 1MHz, but what does that clock mean in MIPS? Anyone want to take a stab at the Moore’s Law constant over 55 years, given the specs non-equivalence? ~2.5M times price change, = 2^22 times. ===================== <https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/unix-history/firstport.html> In 1970, they proposed buying a PDP-11 for about $65,000. [ $535,000 in 2025 according to US Inflation Calculator ] ===================== Texas Instruments Introduces MSPM0C1104 as the Smallest Available Microcontroller <https://linuxgizmos.com/texas-instruments-introduces-mspm0c1104-as-the-smal…> Measuring only 1.38mm², this wafer chip-scale package MCU is 38% smaller than existing alternatives. The MSPM0C1104 includes a 24MHz Arm Cortex-M0+ core (32-bit), 16KB of flash memory, 1KB of SRAM, a 12-bit ADC with three channels, and six GPIO pins. It also supports standard communication interfaces, including UART, SPI, and I2C. Additional features include 5V-tolerant I/Os, a 1-channel DMA controller, a CRC-16 accelerator, and various timers, including a 16-bit advanced timer and two 16-bit general-purpose timers. These MCUs operate in an extended temperature range from -40°C to 125°C and support supply voltages from 1.62V to 3.6V. The MSPM0 series starts at $0.16 in 1,000-unit quantities, with multiple configurations available. ===================== -- 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, 1 week

"Imake: an obsolete build tool" -- anybody got this?

by ron minnich

I know it's out there, I just can't find it. It's also called the "imake rhymes with mistake" paper, a nice companion to "going for baroque..."

3 months, 2 weeks

A Unix Code Walkthrough by Ken Thompson

by Warren Toomey

Hi all, I've just received a set of MP3 recordings from Bob Kridle. He says: These are recordings of Ken Thompson doing a read through of one of an early UNIX kernel code listing with a group of grad students at UC Berkeley while he was a visiting prof. there. The date is roughly 1975. I've put the recordings here along with his e-mails about the recordings: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Recordings/1975_Unix_Code_Walkthru/ I've only just listened to the first few minutes of each. The quality is fine, but I might spend some time reducing the noise, bringing up the quiet parts and removing a few clicks and pops. If anybody else has more details of these recording, please let us know! Cheers, Warren

3 months, 2 weeks

MPM macros and code from 2002

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi All. A while back I found a copy of the MPM macros and code that I undoubtedly got from Brian Kernighan. Warren has put it in the archives: > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 08:04:55 +1000 > From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> > To: Aharon Robbins <arnold(a)skeeve.com> > Cc: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> > Subject: Re: MPM macros and code > > On Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 03:11:47PM +0200, Aharon Robbins wrote: > > I have the following file: > > -rw-r--r-- 1 arnold arnold 100770 Feb 17 2002 mpm.shar > > Thanks Arnold, I've just put it here: > > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Typesetting/ > > Cheers! Warren Thanks Warren! Arnold

3 months, 2 weeks

Caldera release of awk, grep, and libregex from 2001

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi All. A while back I found the Caldera release of awk, grep and libregex from 2001. The tar file is dated 2012, but the actual code is from earlier. Warren has put it in the archive: > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 08:07:12 +1000 > From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> > To: Aharon Robbins <arnold(a)skeeve.com> > Cc: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> > Subject: Re: Caldera release of awk, grep, and libregex from 2001 > > On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 06:42:50PM +0200, Aharon Robbins wrote: > > I'm looking through my Downloads directory to try to clean it up > > a bit. I found this: > > > > $ ls -l osutils.tar.gz > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 101072 Nov 25 2012 osutils.tar.gz > > Thanks for this as well, it's now at: > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Awk_Grep/ > > Cheers, Warren Thanks Warren! Arnold

3 months, 2 weeks

Question about compiled programs on a newer machine type be usable ?

by babydr DBA James W. Laferriere

Hello all , Here I am again , Maybe my ? might be relative to the community . I grabbed an archive of precompiled gnu software , During the extraction I got a 'warning' from a gzip'd tar & decided to dig into the underlying tarball to see if it was trully corrupted or repairable . Tada , I did a silly and less'd one of the binary files and noticed that the underlying file was 'ar'd by /usr/local/alphaev6-dec-osf5.1b/bin/ar , well all said and done My ol' as100 ain't a ev6 . So my Question , Could I use these programs that were created on a ev6 cpu system on my ev4 ? Tia , JimL -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | James W. Laferriere | System Techniques | Give me VMS | | Network & System Engineer | 3237 Holden Road | Give me Linux | | jiml(a)system-techniques.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 | only on AXP | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

3 months, 2 weeks

a bit of Plan9 history

by Jan Schaumann

Hi, This was seen on Dave Farber's IP list; with many of the Dramatis Personae on this list it seems worthwhile to share it here, too: "What I Saw at the Evolution of Plan 9" by Geoff Collyer https://adi.onl/oral.pdf -Jan

3 months, 2 weeks

When/how did ctime change from inode "creation" to "change" time?

by Theodore Ts'o

As part of a discusion on the Linux kernel mailing list, there was an assertion that ctime was orginally "creation time". From the v7 sources in TUHS, we can see: struct dinode { unsigned short di_mode; /* mode and type of file */ short di_nlink; /* number of links to file */ short di_uid; /* owner's user id */ short di_gid; /* owner's group id */ off_t di_size; /* number of bytes in file */ char di_addr[40]; /* disk block addresses */ time_t di_atime; /* time last accessed */ time_t di_mtime; /* time last modified */ time_t di_ctime; /* time created */ }; ... although the v7 kernel sources does seem to update ctime when the inode metadata changes, regardless of what the coment in /usr/src/sys/h/ino.h might say. More interestingly, this comment seems to continue in newer versions up to 3BSD, and then the comments becomes "change time" in BSD 4.2, probably coincident with the File System Implementation? The best we can guess is that the change from "creation time" to "inode change time" happened sometime between 1979 and 1982. Does anyone who was around can give the story about how and when this happened? - Ted

3 months, 3 weeks

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