On 6 August 2018 at 17:16, <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

The early shells (Thompson, Mashey) used "% " for regular user (and # for root). The Thompson shell didn't have a setable prompt.
The Bourne shell (V7) had setable PS1 (start of command) and PS2 (continuation prompts) and set the to "$ " and "> " respectively. Again # was used for root

Okay, but why did Bourne switch from "%" to "$"? Was it to inform the user that they were using the new shell as opposed to the old one, or was there some other reasoning behind the switch?

-Henry