10 Apr
2015
10 Apr
'15
8:37 p.m.
To tell whether Ken installed v6 or a copy of his home
system, look at /usr/dict/words. On the home system
that file is the wordlist from Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, 7th edition, licensed for Bell Labs use
only. On distribution systems we substituted the wordlist
for "spell". The latter list contains many more proper
names, acronyms, etc than the dictionary did, in
particular names that appear in Unix documentation
such as Ritchie, Kernighan, and McIlroy. It also lacks
lots of trivially derivable words like "organizationally".
If you do have the Webster file rather than the spell
file, please don't propagate it.
Doug
11 Apr
11 Apr
6:45 a.m.
New subject: Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70
On Friday, 10 April 2015 at 14:37:25 -0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
To tell whether Ken installed v6 or a copy of his
home
system, look at /usr/dict/words. On the home system
that file is the wordlist from Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, 7th edition, licensed for Bell Labs use
only. On distribution systems we substituted the wordlist
for "spell". The latter list contains many more proper
names, acronyms, etc than the dictionary did, in
particular names that appear in Unix documentation
such as Ritchie, Kernighan, and McIlroy. It also lacks
lots of trivially derivable words like "organizationally".
In FreeBSD there are two files /usr/share/dict/web2 and
/usr/share/dict/web2a, suggesting that they're Webster. web2 sounds
like the words file, while web2a apparently consists of compounds.
web2 doesn't contain Ritchie or McIlroy, though it does contain
"organizationally". The oldest entry in the svn history is:
r1638 | rgrimes | 1994-05-31 05:09:18 +1000 (Tue, 31 May 1994) | 2 lines
BSD 4.4 Lite Share Sources
I don't have sccs, so I can't check the origins of that file.
Comments?
Greg
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8:39 a.m.
New subject: Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70
"Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
In FreeBSD there are two files /usr/share/dict/web2 and
/usr/share/dict/web2a, suggesting that they're Webster. web2 sounds
like the words file, while web2a apparently consists of compounds.
web2 doesn't contain Ritchie or McIlroy, though it does contain
"organizationally". The oldest entry in the svn history is:
r1638 | rgrimes | 1994-05-31 05:09:18 +1000 (Tue, 31 May 1994) | 2 lines
BSD 4.4 Lite Share Sources
Those files are Webster's Unabridged. They were derived from
a tape produced by the army and distributed without restrictions.
The provenance is more fully described at puzzlers.org; burrow
down their file tree from "Solving Tools of the NPL" to "The NPL
Wordlists" and "Our Wordlists" to "Doug McIlroy's
Wordlists"
Doug
4:41 p.m.
New subject: Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70
On Apr 11, 2015, at 12:39 AM, Doug McIlroy
<doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
"Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
In FreeBSD there are two files /usr/share/dict/web2 and
/usr/share/dict/web2a, suggesting that they're Webster. web2 sounds
like the words file, while web2a apparently consists of compounds.
web2 doesn't contain Ritchie or McIlroy, though it does contain
"organizationally". The oldest entry in the svn history is:
r1638 | rgrimes | 1994-05-31 05:09:18 +1000 (Tue, 31 May 1994) | 2 lines
BSD 4.4 Lite Share Sources
Those files are Webster's Unabridged. They were derived from
a tape produced by the army and distributed without restrictions.
The provenance is more fully described at puzzlers.org; burrow
down their file tree from "Solving Tools of the NPL" to "The NPL
Wordlists" and "Our Wordlists" to "Doug McIlroy's
Wordlists"
More importantly, it was from Websters 1913 edition, which had passed from
copyright protection at the time it was produced. There’s several words in it
that have shifted in accepted spelling since that edition which I noticed when
a spelling program flagged the now-correct spelling years ago…
There were other word lists floating around the Internet in the 80’s that one
could obtain with some effort that differed. I may have been on a system once
that had both lists. There’s about 30 words that are different, and about 200
words in that other file not in web2. The system I know that had this word list
on it has been turned off for 20 years now, so I can’t easily check these
numbers. I assume other file was the file talked about as being licensed to
Bell Labs…
Warner
5:37 p.m.
New subject: Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70
On Sat, 11 Apr 2015, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
In FreeBSD there are two files /usr/share/dict/web2
and
/usr/share/dict/web2a, suggesting that they're Webster. web2 sounds
like the words file, while web2a apparently consists of compounds.
web2 doesn't contain Ritchie or McIlroy, though it does contain
"organizationally". The oldest entry in the svn history is:
r1638 | rgrimes | 1994-05-31 05:09:18 +1000 (Tue, 31 May 1994) | 2 lines
BSD 4.4 Lite Share Sources
I don't have sccs, so I can't check the origins of that file.
Comments?
There is no existing SCCS history for those two files.
But you can see the background about it in the README from the SCCS.
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/share/dict/README?revision=49371&view=ma…
(Also in the later FreeBSD README too.)
The web2 files were first introduced in 4.3BSD as documented in the
changes documentation (between the 4.2BSD distribution of July 1983 and
the 4.3 revision in 1986) 4.3BSD's usr/doc/smm/12.uchanges/7.t (but I
don't see this in the SCCS history).
We only have the complete operating system as of 3BSD and later and they
include "words" file from 32V. It doesn't have "Kernighan",
"McIlroy",
nor "organizationally". The version continued from 32V is
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/csrg/share/dict/words?view=log
4:23 p.m.
New subject: Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70
On 2015-04-10 20:37, Doug McIlroy wrote:
To tell whether Ken installed v6 or a copy of his
home
system, look at /usr/dict/words. On the home system
that file is the wordlist from Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, 7th edition, licensed for Bell Labs use
only. On distribution systems we substituted the wordlist
for "spell". The latter list contains many more proper
names, acronyms, etc than the dictionary did, in
particular names that appear in Unix documentation
such as Ritchie, Kernighan, and McIlroy. It also lacks
lots of trivially derivable words like "organizationally".
If you do have the Webster file rather than the spell
file, please don't propagate it.
Good to know, I doubt I'll ever run into a dump of a 1975 CORY though.
For now I assume Thompson erred on the safe side and brought his home
system as reference material rather than install media.
/Jacob
3508
days inactive
3509
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Doug McIlroy -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Jacob Goense -
Jeremy C. Reed -
Warner Losh