16 Sep
2024
16 Sep
'24
3:48 a.m.
From: Rik Farrow <rik(a)rikfarrow.com>
Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a
function of the tiny
disk and memory available? Or more a function of having a Teletype 33
for input?
I'm not sure the answer was ever written down (e.g. in a memo); we will
probably have to rely on memory - and memories that far back are now fairly
thin on the ground by now. Perhaps Mr. McIlroy (or Mr. Thompson, if we're
_really_ lucky) will humor us? :-)
I have the impression that some of the names are _possibly_ inherited from
Multics (which the early Unicians all used before Unix existed) - but maybe
not. The command to list a directory, on Multics, is 'ls' (but see below) -
but the Multics qcommand to remove a file is 'del' (not 'rm'); and
change working
directory is 'cwd'. So maybe ls' is just chance?
Multics had a 'feature' where a segment (file) could have additional names (to
the main name), and this is used to add short aliases to many commands, so the
'base name'' for the directory list command is 'list';
'ls' is a short
alias. A list of Multics commands (with short forms) is available here:
https://www.multicians.org/multics-commands.html
I'm not sure how early that alias mechanism came in, though; my copy of
"Introduction to Multics" (February, 1974) doesn't have short names (or,
at
least, it doesn't use them).
It won't have anything to do with disk and memory. Having used a Teletype, it
would take noticeably longer to type in a longer name! It's also more effort
and time. I would expect those are the reasons for the short names.
Noel
16 Sep
16 Sep
4:01 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
i doubt there is a fully satisfactory answer. dd was a jab at IBM JCL.
Several later commands were derived from earlier ones, like sed and
tar. And awk ...
I think the one that needs more explaining is grep. If brevity were
the sole criterion, it could have been shorter.
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 5:49 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
From: Rik Farrow <rik(a)rikfarrow.com>
Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a
function of the tiny
disk and memory available? Or more a function of having a Teletype 33
for input?
I'm not sure the answer was ever written down (e.g. in a memo); we will
probably have to rely on memory - and memories that far back are now fairly
thin on the ground by now. Perhaps Mr. McIlroy (or Mr. Thompson, if we're
_really_ lucky) will humor us? :-)
I have the impression that some of the names are _possibly_ inherited from
Multics (which the early Unicians all used before Unix existed) - but maybe
not. The command to list a directory, on Multics, is 'ls' (but see below) -
but the Multics qcommand to remove a file is 'del' (not 'rm'); and
change working
directory is 'cwd'. So maybe ls' is just chance?
Multics had a 'feature' where a segment (file) could have additional names (to
the main name), and this is used to add short aliases to many commands, so the
'base name'' for the directory list command is 'list';
'ls' is a short
alias. A list of Multics commands (with short forms) is available here:
https://www.multicians.org/multics-commands.html
I'm not sure how early that alias mechanism came in, though; my copy of
"Introduction to Multics" (February, 1974) doesn't have short names (or,
at
least, it doesn't use them).
It won't have anything to do with disk and memory. Having used a Teletype, it
would take noticeably longer to type in a longer name! It's also more effort
and time. I would expect those are the reasons for the short names.
Noel 
4:15 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that people tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
It's a counterargument to my understanding of why people prefer "cat foo |
cmd" to "cmd <foo" or "<foo cmd". There's a psych
thesis in there somewhere.
-rob
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 8:01 AM Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS <
tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
i doubt there is a fully satisfactory answer. dd was a
jab at IBM JCL.
Several later commands were derived from earlier ones, like sed and
tar. And awk ...
I think the one that needs more explaining is grep. If brevity were
the sole criterion, it could have been shorter.
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 5:49 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
tiny
fairly
From: Rik Farrow <rik(a)rikfarrow.com>
> Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a function of the > disk and memory available? Or more a
function of having a Teletype
33
for
input?
I'm not sure the answer was ever written down (e.g. in a memo); we will
probably have to rely on memory - and memories that far back are now thin on the ground by now. Perhaps Mr. McIlroy
(or Mr. Thompson, if we're
_really_ lucky) will humor us? :-)
I have the impression that some of the names are _possibly_ inherited
from
Multics (which the early Unicians all used before
Unix existed) - but
maybe
not. The command to list a directory, on Multics,
is 'ls' (but see
below) -
but the Multics qcommand to remove a file is
'del' (not 'rm'); and
change working
directory is 'cwd'. So maybe ls'
is just chance?
Multics had a 'feature' where a segment (file) could have additional
names (to
the main name), and this is used to add short
aliases to many commands,
so the
'base name'' for the directory
list command is 'list'; 'ls' is a short
alias. A list of Multics commands (with short forms) is available here:
https://www.multicians.org/multics-commands.html
I'm not sure how early that alias mechanism came in, though; my copy of
"Introduction to Multics" (February, 1974) doesn't have short names (or,
at
least, it doesn't use them).
It won't have anything to do with disk and memory. Having used a
Teletype,
it
would take noticeably longer to type in a longer
name! It's also more
effort
and time. I would expect those are the reasons
for the short names.
Noel
4:29 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 08:15:34AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that people
tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Muscle memory. dd is weird but you sort of get used to it and then just
do it how you always have.
9:55 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
You know, this is a place that might actually be able to provide a
definitive answer to me. A brief web search found me asking the same
question in 1995.
When I were a wee lad, I was told `dd` was short for `do DEBE`, which,
while obviously referencing a well-known movie about a Northern Texas
sports team and their most enthusiastic fan, also referred to the mainframe
software whose name was an acronym for `Does Everything But Eat` and whose
function was to copy data across sources with very different blocking and
representation conventions...which is kinda what `dd` does.
Can anyone here confirm or deny that origin for the utility's name?
Adam
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 3:36 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 08:15:34AM +1000, Rob Pike
wrote:
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that
people tended to use the
JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix
style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Muscle memory. dd is weird but you sort of get used to it and then just
do it how you always have.
10:17 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
I was told it's IBMese: Define Dataset.
-rob
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 2:01 PM Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You know, this is a place that might actually be able
to provide a
definitive answer to me. A brief web search found me asking the same
question in 1995.
When I were a wee lad, I was told `dd` was short for `do DEBE`, which,
while obviously referencing a well-known movie about a Northern Texas
sports team and their most enthusiastic fan, also referred to the mainframe
software whose name was an acronym for `Does Everything But Eat` and whose
function was to copy data across sources with very different blocking and
representation conventions...which is kinda what `dd` does.
Can anyone here confirm or deny that origin for the utility's name?
Adam
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 3:36 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 08:15:34AM +1000, Rob
Pike wrote:
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that
people tended to use the
JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix
style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Muscle memory. dd is weird but you sort of get used to it and then just
do it how you always have.
11:26 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
According to GC28-6704-1, IBM System/360 Operating System: Job Control
Language Reference,
DD means "Data Definition". Bitsavers knows all.
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 10:15 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Rob Pike wrote:
[ The origin of the "dd" command ]
I was told it's IBMese: Define Dataset.
Straight from IBM's JCL (Job Control Language); heck, I still remember
obscure things like "DISP=(,KEEP)" etc...
-- Dave
4:30 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
One man's "data definition" is another's "define dataset"
remembered
faintly from 50 years ago.
-rob
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 6:11 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78(a)gmail.com> wrote:
According to GC28-6704-1, IBM System/360 Operating
System: Job Control
Language Reference,
DD means "Data Definition". Bitsavers knows all.
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 10:15 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Rob Pike wrote:
[ The origin of the "dd" command ]
I was told it's IBMese: Define Dataset.
Straight from IBM's JCL (Job Control Language); heck, I still remember
obscure things like "DISP=(,KEEP)" etc...
-- Dave
11:06 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, 16 Sept 2024 at 00:11, Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You know, this is a place that might actually be able
to provide a
definitive answer to me. A brief web search found me asking the same
question in 1995.
When I were a wee lad, I was told `dd` was short for `do DEBE`, which,
while obviously referencing a well-known movie about a Northern Texas
sports team and their most enthusiastic fan, also referred to the mainframe
software whose name was an acronym for `Does Everything But Eat` and whose
function was to copy data across sources with very different blocking and
representation conventions...which is kinda what `dd` does.
Can anyone here confirm or deny that origin for the utility's name?
I looked through a broad swath of dd source files and man pages from v5 to
System III and SVR4, the BSD SCCS tree, various commercial UNIXes, modern
BSDs, and modern Linux but none of them have any sort of explanation of the
name. I figured I'd at least find something!
It is the case that many places refer to the command's function as "convert
and copy," so I wonder if it's some sort of play on the fact that the
expected name of the command might be "cc".
-Henry
12:11 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
James Gosling used this idiomatic JCL command (see loop body) in something
or other, and Brian and I borrowed it (with attribution) for the bundle
command in our book.
% cat /usr/local/plan9/bin/bundle
#!/bin/sh
echo '# To unbundle, run this file'
for i
do
echo "echo $i"
echo "sed 's/.//' >$i <<'//GO.SYSIN DD $i'"
sed "s/^/-/" $i
echo "//GO.SYSIN DD $i"
done
%
-rob
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 3:31 PM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sept 2024 at 00:11, Adam Thornton
<athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You know, this is a place that might actually be
able to provide a
definitive answer to me. A brief web search found me asking the same
question in 1995.
When I were a wee lad, I was told `dd` was short for `do DEBE`, which,
while obviously referencing a well-known movie about a Northern Texas
sports team and their most enthusiastic fan, also referred to the mainframe
software whose name was an acronym for `Does Everything But Eat` and whose
function was to copy data across sources with very different blocking and
representation conventions...which is kinda what `dd` does.
Can anyone here confirm or deny that origin for the utility's name?
I looked through a broad swath of dd source files and man pages from v5 to
System III and SVR4, the BSD SCCS tree, various commercial UNIXes, modern
BSDs, and modern Linux but none of them have any sort of explanation of the
name. I figured I'd at least find something!
It is the case that many places refer to the command's function as
"convert and copy," so I wonder if it's some sort of play on the fact
that
the expected name of the command might be "cc".
-Henry
17 Sep
17 Sep
4:50 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Rob Pike writes:
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that people
tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=3Dfoo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50,
the moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL
mode.
And don't tell me you have never put a copy of dd in the root
directory just so you could tell someone to
/dd if=... :-)
--lyndon
5:14 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Sep 16, 2024, at 3:50 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg
(VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
Rob Pike writes:
It has to be DD, not dd!
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that
people tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=3Dfoo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50,
the moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL
mode. And don't tell me you have never put a copy of dd
in the root
directory just so you could tell someone to
/dd if=... :-)
That won't work. The data definition JCL statement format
is more like this:
//<name> DD <parameters>
optionally continued by one or more of
//<spaces> DD <parameters>
...
:-)
8:19 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Bakul Shah writes:
Yeah, I know. But you can get away with '//dd if= ...' which
was more than enough to give some old timers whiplash the
first time they saw that on a UNIX box :-)
--lyndon
/dd if=...
:-)
That won't work. The data definition JCL statement format
is more like this:
//<name> DD <parameters> 
5:16 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over
the age of 50, the
moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL mode.
Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
And don't tell me you have never put a copy of dd
in the root directory
just so you could tell someone to
/dd if=... :-)
Better still: //dd ...
-- Dave
5:24 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
wrote:
Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu.
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone
over the age of 50, the
moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL mode.
Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
6 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Monday, September 16th, 2024 at 4:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave
Horsfall wrote:
Never seen that either, POSIX doesn't suggest any support for that either, with this
in the RATIONALE section:
---QUOTE---
The OPTIONS section is listed as "None" because there are no options recognized
by historical dd utilities. Certainly, many of the operands could have been designed to
use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would have resulted in the classic hyphenated
option letters. In this version of this volume of POSIX.1-2024, dd retains its curious
JCL-like syntax due to the large number of applications that depend on the historical
implementation.
---END QUOTE---
- Matt G.
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg
(VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu. Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone
over the age of 50, the
moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL mode.
Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
6:17 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
I don't remember whether late Research Unix had -if, but Plan 9 certainly
did.
-rob
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:06 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
On Monday, September 16th, 2024 at 4:24 PM, Larry
McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com>
wrote:
Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu.
Never seen that either, POSIX doesn't suggest any support for that either,
with this in the RATIONALE section:
---QUOTE---
The OPTIONS section is listed as "None" because there are no options
recognized by historical dd utilities. Certainly, many of the operands
could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would
have resulted in the classic hyphenated option letters. In this version of
this volume of POSIX.1-2024, dd retains its curious JCL-like syntax due to
the large number of applications that depend on the historical
implementation.
---END QUOTE---
- Matt G.
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave
Horsfall wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
>
> > Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50,
the
moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically
switches to JCL mode.
Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
11:54 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
I think it was only Plan 9. The change was motivated by the
rc shell, which treated x=y anywhere on the command line (not just
at the beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
(For a while I used Byron's rc. I was used to typing
echo ===============
to generate separator lines. rc threw a syntax error at me. :-)
Arnold
Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't remember whether late Research Unix had
-if, but Plan 9 certainly
did.
-rob
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:06 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
> On Monday, September 16th, 2024 at 4:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
> > >
> > > > Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50,
> the
> > > > moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to
JCL mode.
> > >
> > > Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a
Penguin thing?
> >
> >
> > Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu.
>
> Never seen that either, POSIX doesn't suggest any support for that either,
> with this in the RATIONALE section:
>
> ---QUOTE---
>
> The OPTIONS section is listed as "None" because there are no options
> recognized by historical dd utilities. Certainly, many of the operands
> could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would
> have resulted in the classic hyphenated option letters. In this version of
> this volume of POSIX.1-2024, dd retains its curious JCL-like syntax due to
> the large number of applications that depend on the historical
> implementation.
>
> ---END QUOTE---
>
> - Matt G.
>
18 Sep
18 Sep
7:40 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
[ Of "dd -if" ]
On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
I think it was only Plan 9. The change was motivated
by the rc shell,
which treated x=y anywhere on the command line (not just at the
beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
That is plain broken, but I can see how it could/would work; something
like "A=B blah A=C blah"?
(For a while I used Byron's rc. I was used to
typing
echo ===============
to generate separator lines. rc threw a syntax error at me. :-)
Which is why I've always quoted anything not strictly alphanumeric; you
never know what the current shell will do (especially if it's CSH[*]).
[*]
At a client's office I espied a book on CSH, and said something like "If
there's any book that deserves to be burned, it's one on CSH programming";
pretty much everyone laughed :-)
-- Dave
8:04 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
which treated x=y anywhere on the command line
(not just at the
beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
That is plain broken
11:09 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Rich Salz <rich.salz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
No. The shell is NOT like sh, bash, etc., that you are used to. Go read
the paper or, better yet, play with a version of it at
https://github.com/rakitzis/rc
There is also https://github.com/benavento/rc ; I didn't know that
Byron had made rc available directly.
Arnold
which treated x=y anywhere on the command line
(not just at the
beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
That is plain broken
11:12 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Taking a closer look:
https://github.com/benavento/rc --- This is a standalone port of Tom Duff's
original to *nix.
https://github.com/rakitzis/rc --- This is Byron's reimplementation.
Arnold
7:08 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 9/17/24 9:40 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
Unfamiliar, maybe, but even the Bourne shell had `set -k'.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
The change was
motivated by the rc shell,
which treated x=y anywhere on the command line (not just at the
beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
That is plain broken, 
30 Sep
30 Sep
7:01 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 1:55 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
I think it was only Plan 9. The change was motivated
by the
rc shell, which treated x=y anywhere on the command line (not just
at the beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.
I'm a little late to the thread, but this is not quite true.
rc's lexer and grammar treated = as a special
symbol - just like ( or | or & or ; - and so it couldn't
be used as a literal except when quoted.
That is, "foo x=y" was a syntax error, not an equivalent to "x=y
foo".
One of the tidyings I did during covid lockdown was to rewrite
rc's parser not to use yacc anymore [1], specifically to make
it easy to allow "foo x=y". As I wrote in the commit message,
dd fans rejoice! (Also fans of -foo=bar flag syntax.)
Best,
Russ
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/plan9port-dev/c/AS8acHti7eo/m/0tZF7h7FBQAJ
2:16 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Russ Cox <rsc(a)swtch.com> wrote:
I'm a little late to the thread, but this is not
quite true.
rc's lexer and grammar treated = as a special
symbol - just like ( or | or & or ; - and so it couldn't
be used as a literal except when quoted.
That is, "foo x=y" was a syntax error, not an equivalent to "x=y
foo".
OK, distinction noted. It was a long time ago.
One of the tidyings I did during covid lockdown was to
rewrite
rc's parser not to use yacc anymore [1], specifically to make
it easy to allow "foo x=y". As I wrote in the commit message,
dd fans rejoice! (Also fans of -foo=bar flag syntax.)
Very cool. Have other Plan 9 distros picked this up? Just wondering.
Thanks,
Arnold
6:10 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 30, 2024 at 4:17 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
I looked at https://9p.io/plan9/ and also 9front and neither has the change.
I don't think either is particularly maintained at this point.
(I made the change in the Unix port of the tools,
https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/.)
Best,
Russ
One of the
tidyings I did during covid lockdown was to rewrite
rc's parser not to use yacc anymore [1], specifically to make
it easy to allow "foo x=y". As I wrote in the commit message,
dd fans rejoice! (Also fans of -foo=bar flag syntax.)
Very cool. Have other Plan 9 distros picked this up? Just wondering. 
9 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 9/30/24 07:10, Russ Cox wrote:
On Mon, Sep 30, 2024 at 4:17 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com
<mailto:arnold@skeeve.com>> wrote:
Since (and including) 2020, 9front has averaged 700 commits a year to
the project, a very large portion of that being bug fixes and upkeep.
We've also been presenting some of the more interesting new work at
recent IWP9 conferences, now that they've become a yearly occurrence
again thanks to the Plan 9 Foundation. From my perspective things
have been quite lively lately.
We did take a look at your rc parser changes (closer to when they were
first pushed to plan9port) but had decided not to adopt them at the
time.
Thank you,
Jacob Moody
One of the tidyings I did during covid lockdown
was to rewrite
rc's parser not to use yacc anymore [1], specifically to make
it easy to allow "foo x=y". As I wrote in the commit message,
dd fans rejoice! (Also fans of -foo=bar flag syntax.)
Very cool. Have other Plan 9 distros picked this up? Just wondering.
I looked at https://9p.io/plan9/ <https://9p.io/plan9/> and also 9front and neither
has the change.
I don't think either is particularly maintained at this point.
17 Sep
17 Sep
noon
New subject: On computerese
"Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" <lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over
the age of 50,
the moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL
mode.
I am (considerably) over 50, but was fortunate enough to never have
to have used JCL. After a two year hiatus for religious studies,
I returned to my university for my senior year and encountered
Unix (IS/1 on a PDP-11/70), C, and Software Tools. It was sooooo far
ahead of everything else that I knew then that's where I wanted
to spend my career.
Arnold
12:25 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Tue, 17 Sept 2024 at 02:00, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
"Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)"
<lyndon(a)orthanc.ca> wrote:
In the liberal arts world where my background is, IBMs were not a sure
thing. My alma mater was a DEC shop top to bottom starting in the early
'70s. The psychology department had a PDP-12, I believe the natural and
computer sciences had a few 8s and 11s (and CS later an 11/750), and I know
that the "computing center" (mostly administrativa) got an 11/780 pretty
much as soon as they could. When I got there everything was still all DEC,
VMS for the computing center (a 6620 clustered with some smaller boxes,
also serving email and news) and mostly Ultrix on MIPS for the sciences.
-Henry
Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone
over the age of 50,
the moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL
mode.
I am (considerably) over 50, but was fortunate enough to never have
to have used JCL. After a two year hiatus for religious studies,
I returned to my university for my senior year and encountered
Unix (IS/1 on a PDP-11/70), C, and Software Tools. It was sooooo far
ahead of everything else that I knew then that's where I wanted
to spend my career.
18 Sep
18 Sep
2:25 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 08:15:34AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that people
tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Wait, when did that happen? And more importantly, _where_?
The GNU Coreutils version (according to both --help and the man page)
only appears to support the JCL convention and in fact complains and
aborts when fed Unix style arguments. The NetBSD version behaves the
same way.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
2:50 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:25:04PM +0200, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 08:15:34AM +1000, Rob Pike
wrote:
Plan 9.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
For me the fascinating thing about dd is that
people tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even
the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".
Wait, when did that happen? And more importantly, _where_?
The GNU Coreutils version (according to both --help and the man page)
only appears to support the JCL convention and in fact complains and
aborts when fed Unix style arguments. The NetBSD version behaves the
same way.
16 Sep
16 Sep
9:02 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
I think the one that needs more explaining is grep. If
brevity were
the sole criterion, it could have been shorter.
First, it was mnemonic for the ed(1) syntax g/re/p, and second
have a vowel in it (instead of calling it grp) made it easily
pronounceable.
I also suspect that at this point we're overthinking it. :-)
Arnold
82
days inactive
97
days old
32 comments
17 participants
participants (17)
-
Adam Thornton -
Alexander Schreiber -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Bakul Shah -
Chet Ramey -
Dave Horsfall -
Henry Bent -
Jacob Moody -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Larry McVoy -
Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) -
Peter Weinberger (温博格) -
Rich Salz -
Rob Pike -
Russ Cox -
segaloco -
Tom Lyon