On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
I believe the Berkeley #! magic number came first.
That's right.... the #!path syntax was BSDism that went main stream because of its usefulness with "little languages" not just the shell. I'd have to check the tapes but it may have gone back as far as the original BSD ~77/78 - Ken would have brought it back after his sabbatical (or not - he would have seen it).
The # was nod to the # being the first characters of the C program to say to use the preprocessor; but I've forgotten why the bang was added before the path. It could have been almost anything.
But the #!path syntax really was a great idea and opened up a lot of different pseudo built-in scripting languages we think go with UNIX today. But back in the day, their were not that many to start.
The C Shell already
used this as a comment,
exactly.
the Bourne shells grudgingly followed.
Yep - although, like Warren I don't remember how soon. The thing was you programmed to V7 [Bourne] syntax and typed to C shell [I still do - the rom's in the my fingers are not erasable]. I do remember commenting Bourne scripts, so it must have come early in the Vax line, although its strange the 2.x did not pick it up, until it seems 2.11 which is pretty late.
I still remember using : for a comment in the V6 shell. Was also the label
for goto.