Arnold Skeeve: Have you asked Doug McIlroy? ======= Actually I did, last night, on Warren's behalf. I had meant to drop Doug a note anyway to apologize for not letting him know I was in his general neighborhood last week. Here's Doug's reply: Pipes were first documented in v3, Feb 1973. At that time my original clumsy shell syntax, cmd>cmd>[file] was still in use. Within a few months, Ken invented today's pipe symbol as something more presentable at a talk he'd been invited to give in England--an Infosys "State of the Art" conference if I remember correctly (not the same Infosys as the current Indian giant). I also remember the very blackboard in the garret lab where I sketched my syntax and Ken exclaimed, "I'll do it". That was late in the day and I'm quite sure it was dark outside. Unlike Ken, I was not in the habit of staying in the lab into the evening. That makes me think that pipe day was not too far off the solstice. It would be nice to believe that pipes preciptated the third edition, but in fact the first four editions came out almost like clockwork at 8-month intervals, so any correlation with pipes is highly speculative. ====== Norman Wilson Toronto ON (actually Ramsey NJ at the moment, a good bit north of Murray Hill)