10 Dec
2015
10 Dec
'15
6:23 a.m.
On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 5:47 PM, John Cowan <cowan(a)mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
I thought "ld" stood for Link eDitor. :-)
I have never heard that justification. It's always been talked about as
the "loader" communications I had with different folks including Dennis.
In the early/mid '70s the person that introduced me to Unix (tjk) always
called it the loader. Ted was (like many of us in those days) coming
from either IBM's TSS or MTS, and influenced by IBM's terminology as well
as DECs.
On OS/8 there
were four linkers, one for each compiler: ABSLDR, LOAD, LOADER,
and LINK. LINK was for the macro assembler, the last one published.
I used TSS/8 and I've forgotten what is was called there, never used
OS/8. In TOPS and Tenex land it was called a linker, as it was on TSS and
MTS.
I don't remember the story on the various PDP-11
DEC OSes;
RT-11, DOS-11 and RSX all called it a linker.
by VMS days
it was exclusively LINK.
As the author of VMS's link and later versions, I'll try to ask Paul
tomorrow what he knows/remembers. In my presence, he has b*tched about
Unix calling it a 'loader.
'
Clem