Clem Cole: Fortran had an important (if indirect) influence in early Unix. From Dennis's memories of the early days of Unix on the PDP-7: Soon after TMG became available, Thompson decided that we could not pretend to offer a real computing service without Fortran, so he sat down to write a Fortran in TMG. As I recall, the intent to handle Fortran lasted about a week. What he produced instead was a definition of and a compiler for the new language B. (The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing System; see the 1984 UNIX System issue of the BLTJ for the whole thing, or just read https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html) Now let's move on to the name `rc'. Not the shell, but the usage as part of a file name. Those two characters appear at the end of the many annoying, and mostly pointless, configuration files that litter one's home directory these days, apparently copied from the old system-startup script /etc/rc as if the name means `startup commands' (or something beginning with r, I suppose, instead of startup). But I recall reading somewhere that it just stood for `runcom,' a Multics-derived term for what we now call a shell script. I can't find a citation to back up that claim, though. Anyone else remember where to look? Norman Wilson Toronto ON