26 Jan
2003
26 Jan
'03
7:40 a.m.
On Thursday, 23 January 2003 at 22:09:51 -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
By the Fourth Edition (November 1973) there had evidently been more
time to think about the syntax; the modern notation is shown, except
that ^ is allowed as a synonym for |. I have long guessed that was
because in those dark days of the past, some upper-case-only
terminals (remember stty lcase?) offered no way to type | (and
perhaps likewise {}`~) but I don't really know.
Certainly the [AK]SR-33 didn't have {}~. I had this funny feeling
that they did have |, but it doesn't make sense, and I'm probably
wrong.
A thing to recall is that the shape of some of the symbols was
somewhat different in those days. In particular, _ was a backarrow
(pointing left), and ^ was an uparrow, making it look much more like |
than it appears nowadays.
Greg
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