[TUHS] Etymology of dsw(1)

John Cowan cowan at mercury.ccil.org
Sat Sep 13 06:11:56 AEST 2014


Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> Delete from Switch Register (delete file whose i-num is in CSR)

There's no doubt that this is right, but
<http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/18/a-bit-of-history> claims
that the switch register was set to the number of files to skip over
before dumping core.  If you resumed the core dump, the next file would
be deleted.  This allowed deleting files whose names could not be typed.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Pour moi, les villes du Silmarillion ont plus de realite que Babylone.
                --Christopher Tolkien, as interviewed by Le Monde



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