8 Jul
2022
8 Jul
'22
7:13 p.m.
Hoi,
thanks for your replies, Doug and Ken.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the ``Multics Condensed Guide''
on multicians.org. Can someone please provide a link?
Interrestingly, I discovered that qed had double quotes (") as a
comment command, which simply ignores the rest of the line. As far
as I know, there's no way to comment ed scripts. Why was that
dropped?
In ex(1) the " comment command reappeared. I've always wondered
why it used this character for comments. Seems it comes from qed,
leaping over ed, but reappearing in ex.
meillo
[2022-07-08 09:01] Ken Thompson <kenbob(a)gmail.com>
On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:24 AM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu>
wrote:
The interpretation of a string of addresses separated by commas and/or
semicolons was already defined in the v1 man page for ed.
Ed was essentially a stripped-down version of Multics qed. The latter
was originally
written by Ken. Unfortunately the "Multics Condensed Guide" online at
multicians.org describes how strings of addresses were interpreted
only by canonical examples for the various editing requests.
I have no specific memory of semicolons in qed. I have a vague
recollection that semicolons originated in ed, however you should put
no trust in this. Maybe Ken remembers.
Doug
String of addresses was same for qed and ed.