[TUHS] Perkin-Elmer Sort/Merge II vs Unix sort(1)

I chanced upon a brochure describing the Perkin-Elmer Series 3200 / (previously Interdata, later Concurrent Computer Corporation) Sort/Merge II utility [1]. It is instructive to compare its design against that of the contemporary Unix sort(1) program [2]. - Sort/Merge II appears to be marketed as a separate product (P/N S90-408), whereas sort(1) was/is an integral part of the Unix used throughout the system. - Sort/Merge II provides interactive and batch command input modes; sort(1) relies on the shell to support both usages. - Sort/Merge II appears to be able to also sort binary files; sort(1) can only handle text. - Sort/Merge II can recover from run-time errors by interactively prompting for user corrections and additional files. In Unix this is delegated to shell scripts. - Sort/Merge II has built-in support for tape handling and blocking; sort(1) relies on pipes from/to dd(1) for this. - Sort/Merge II supports user-coded decision subroutines written in FORTRAN, COBOL, or CAL. Sort(1) doesn't have such support to this day. One could construct a synthetic key with awk(1) if needed. - Sort/Merge II can automatically "allocate" its temporary file. For sort(1) file allocation is handled by the Unix kernel. To me this list is a real-life demonstration of the differences between the, prevalent at the time, thoughtless agglomeration of features into a monolith approach against Unix's careful separation of concerns and modularization via small tools. The same contrast appears in a more contrived setting in J. Bentley's CACM Programming Pearl's column where Doug McIlroy critiques a unique word counting literate program written by Don Knuth [3]. (I slightly suspect that the initial program specification was a trap set up for Knuth.) I also think that the design of Perkin-Elmer's Sort/Merge II shows the influence of salespeople forcing developers to tack-on whatever features were required by important customers. Maybe the clean design of Unix owes a lot to AT&T's operation under the 1956 consent decree that prevented it from entering the computer market. This may have shielded the system's design from unhealthy market pressures during its critical gestation years. [1] https://bitsavers.computerhistory.org/pdf/interdata/32bit/brochures/Sort_Me… [2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/plan9-bell-labs/7thEdMan/v7vol1.pdf#page=166 [3] https://doi.org/10.1145/5948.315654 Diomidis - https://www.spinellis.gr