21 Apr
2017
21 Apr
'17
5:28 a.m.
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
below...
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
I thought it was pretty well established that DMR invented it and
told the UCB guys about it? There's an email in the archives from
him, too.
Dr. McIlroy? Can you clarify?
I believe the Berkeley #! magic number came
first.
That's right.... the #!path syntax was BSDism that went main stream
because of its usefulness with "little languages" not just the shell.
I'd have to check the tapes but it may have gone back as far as the
original BSD ~77/78 - Ken would have brought it back after his sabbatical
(or not - he would have seen it). The # was nod to the # being the first characters of
the C program to say
to use the preprocessor; but I've forgotten why the bang was added before
the path. It could have been almost anything.
Perhaps reminiscent of the '!' escape to shell in ed and maybe
some other interactive programs of the time? That's purely a guess
on my part.
My two cents,
Arnold