Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

On Jul 10, 2018, at 9:50 PM, Noel Hunt <noel.hunt(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm surprised why anyone would bother with these routines anymore, given the startling simplicity of Plan9's arg(3). One stands in awe of such simplicity. I believe it was William Cheswick who designed it, but I may be wrong. > On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:25 PM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote: > RFS vs. NFS and sockets vs. STREAMS were much more serious; they were > about the directions Unix would take going forward, where interoperability > (RFS/NFS) and code portability (sockets/STREAMS) were big either/or issues. > > Had AT&T been smarter about its licensing, both RFS and STREAMS might > have "won", but they weren't, and those technologies have all but > disappeared. > > GNU getopt can be used in a source-compatible way with POSIX getopt; > having long options is up to the programmer. I agree, there were > aesthetic arguments, altough long options have mostly "won". I'm about > as long-time a Unix aficianado as anyone else here, and for many things > I find long options easier to remember than short ones. > > (To their credit, at least initially, the GNU project asked its developers > to use the same long options in all programs for operations that were > the same.) > > Arnold > > > George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote: > > > ... and then somebody GNUified it. I seem to recall three huge > > flamewars in UUCP days: RFS vs NFS, STREAMS (the original) vs sockets, > > and getopt > > > > --no -noo --nooo=please --dont-make-me=do-that > > > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 3:54 PM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote: > > > Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote: > > > > > >> BY the time dmr adds stdio, it was > > >> still early enough in the life to displace the randomness for something as > > >> important as I/O, whereas lack of use of something.like getopt would not > > >> become clearly deficient until after widespread success. > > > > > > I think "widespread access" is more like it for getopt. Getopt dates > > > to 1980; it was in System III (I just checked). That's only about two years > > > after V7 which was circa 1978. > > > > > > Here are the dates: > > > > > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 1073 Apr 11 1980 usr/src/lib/libc/pdp11/gen/getopt.c > > > -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 2273 May 16 1980 usr/src/man/man3/getopt.3c > > > > > > But the world outside the Bell System didn't have System III. Getopt > > > didn't become "popular" until System V or so, and became much easier to > > > adopt once Henry Spencer published his public domain rewrite of the code > > > and man page. > > > > > > Just a nit, (:-) > > > > > > Arnold