Arnold Skeeve:
Have you asked Doug McIlroy?
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Actually I did, last night, on Warren's behalf.
I had meant to drop Doug a note anyway to apologize
for not letting him know I was in his general neighborhood
last week.
Here's Doug's reply:
Pipes were first documented
in v3, Feb 1973. At that time my original clumsy shell
syntax, cmd>cmd>[file] was still in use. Within a few
months, Ken invented today's pipe symbol as something
more presentable at a talk he'd been invited to give
in England--an Infosys "State of the Art" conference
if I remember correctly (not the same Infosys as the
current Indian giant).
I also remember the very blackboard in the garret
lab where I sketched my syntax and Ken exclaimed,
"I'll do it". That was late in the day and I'm
quite sure it was dark outside. Unlike Ken, I
was not in the habit of staying in the lab into
the evening. That makes me think that pipe day
was not too far off the solstice.
It would be nice to believe that pipes preciptated
the third edition, but in fact the first four editions
came out almost like clockwork at 8-month intervals,
so any correlation with pipes is highly speculative.
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Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(actually Ramsey NJ at the moment, a good bit north of Murray Hill)