Re: [TUHS] Where did the "~" come from

On Nov 18, 2020, at 19:46, George Michaelson &lt;ggm(a)algebras.org&gt; wrote: A related but different "thing" is when the cd activity became a pushdown stack of 2 (is it more? I never bothered checking) somebody realised going "there and back again" was innately useful. (I will never forget working on systems which had cd-moral-equivalent <down> and no cd-moral-equivalent <up> but having cd-moral-equivalent $HOME making all directory traversals downward, or back to your personal root) sorry for thread hijack. -G > On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 8:42 AM Dave Horsfall &lt;dave(a)horsfall.org&gt; wrote: > >> On Wed, 18 Nov 2020, Clem Cole wrote: >> >> In our exchange, someone observed suggested that Joy might have picked >> it up because the HOME key was part of the tilde key on the ADM3A, which >> were popular at UCB [i.e. the reason hjkl are the movement keys on vi is >> the were embossed on the top of those keys on the ADM3A]. It also was >> noted that the ASR-33 lacks a ~ key on its keyboard. But Lesk >> definitely needed something to represent a remote user's home directory >> because each system was different, so he was forced to use something. > > The ADM-3A was one of the best terminals ever made. > >> It was also noted that there was plenty of cross-pollination going on as >> students and researchers moved from site to site, so it could have been BTL >> to UCB, vice-versa, or some other path altogether. >> >> So two questions for this august body are: >> 1. Where did the ~ as $HOME convention come to UNIX? > > Gawd... I think I saw it in PWB, but I'm likely wrong. > >> 2. Did UNIX create the idiom, or was there an earlier system such as CTSS, >> TENEX, ITS, MTS, TSS, or the like supported it? > > No idea. but given that Unix inherited a lot of stuff.... > > -- Dave