[TUHS] The ^ = | ?

[Greg Lehey]

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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