On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 2:28 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 04:13:42PM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote:

To bring this back to Unix, how well have the various commenting
principles we've been discussing been adhered to in the code base?

This is something that has bugged me forever.

The Unix design is simple and elegant. The manuals are lucid and
understandable. However, there is next to no commenting in the
early code bases. Why? [and I know ken is reading this]

Given that the comments never made it into the compiled code, there
was no space reason to omit comments. There must have been another
reason.

I was told in school (in 1985) that if I was ever lucky enough to have access to the unix source, I'd find there were no comments. The reason, I was told at the time, was that comments would make the source code useful, and selling software was something AT&T couldn't do due to some consent decree. I've never been able to verify this story, but it came from someone who started with v5. Sadly, he passed away 15 years ago, or I'd just ask him again...

Warner