One connection Knuth had to Unix was inventing LALR parsing, the basic algorithm used in Yacc. I added some things (notably, the precedence mechanism) and had to do a lot of engineering to be able to handle large grammars (e.g. F77) on a PDP-11. But the underlying algorithm (taught to my be Al Aho) was all Knuth.
I seem to recall also that a lot of us at that time were underwhelmed by The Art of Computer Programming, especially the use of MIX. Perhaps it just meant that Knuth was doing things bottom up, while we were doing amazing things in small spaces with B and C.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
To:
<ecashin@noserose.net>, <dave@horsfall.org>
Cc:
<tuhs@tuhs.org>
Sent:
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:39:28 -0700
Subject:
Re: [TUHS] Knuth and Unix
Ed Cashin <ecashin@noserose.net> wrote:
> Knuth is great, and I too am interested to know about his influence on
> UNIX, but Hoare is credited with the quicksort algorithm by the
> authorities I've encountered.
Hoare did indeed invent it. He describes the history, IIRC, in his Turing Award
lecture. (I know I read it, written by him, somewhere.)
Arnold