5 Jul
2021
5 Jul
'21
11:22 a.m.
Thank you for the correction. Having only used Unix from Seventh
Edition on, research-editions only, I have never used head(1) and
didn't realize it was written so early.
On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 12:38 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Noel. Pls check the TUHS archives and I think you
will see sed does yet
exist in 6th edition when Joy wrote head in 1977. Certainly not yet at
UCB.
On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 9:34 PM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
But note
that when wnj wrote head(1), Joy followed the
famous `Unix Philosophy' of doing one (small) job
well. Which means he did not add a feature *i.e.*
abusing, an old program, like cat(1), and add some new
switch to it that that told the program stop outputting
after n lines. Instead Joy wrote a simple new tool.
He didn't need to abuse any existing program by adding new
flags or the like; unless I am mistaken, `sed Nq', for some
number `N', does exactly what `head -N' would do on a single
file, obviating the very need for head(1).
> --