----- Original Message -----

From:

"Diomidis Spinellis" <dds@aueb.gr>

To:

"Steve Johnson" <scj@yaccman.com>, "Toby Thain" <toby@telegraphics.com.au>, <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>

Cc:

Sent:

Tue, 2 May 2017 23:28:25 +0300

Subject:

Re: [TUHS] dmr note on BSD's sins


On 02/05/2017 19:11, Steve Johnson wrote:
> I recall a paper Dennis wrote (maybe more like a note) that was titled
> echo -c considered harmful
> (I think it was -c). It decried the tendency, now completely out of
> control, for everybody and their dog to piddle on perfectly good code
> just because it's "open".

There's definitely Rob Pike's talk "UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered
Harmful", which he delivered at the 1983 Usenix Association Conference
and Software Tools USers Group Summer Conference. Unfortunately, I
can't find it online. It's interesting that the talk's date is now
closer to the birth of Unix than to the present.

Diomidis