[TUHS] fmt(1): history, POSIX, -t, -c
Mary Ann Horton
mah at mhorton.net
Sat May 30 03:14:10 AEST 2020
On 5/29/20 6:39 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 1:11 AM Michael Stiller via TUHS
> <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>> wrote:
>
> It is also included in 2.9BSD, or was it backported:
>
> Just recompiled. I don't think this was one he had to make any changes
> too. As Mary Ann and I said, Kurt wrote as part of the UCB Mail
> package [which includes delivermail(8) - which was the moral parent to
> sendmail(8)].
fmt was literally part of Mail - it compiled in the same source
directory, and was considered user agent (UA) code. delivermail/sendmail
was separate, also from Berkeley, but written primarily by Eric Allman,
and was the mail transport agent (MTA). It's in 2.8BSD as well.
> The whole key is that Keith did not have a Vax at the Math department
> (they had an 11/70 with max memory) and wanted all of the cool
> programs that were being created on the Vax. Remember, VM is
> automatic overlays. So first with the kernel, and then later with
> user code, larger and larger programs were enabled and many of the
> programs for the Vax migrated to the PDP-11, as people ran out of
> address space (IIRC: one the first user programs that needed to use
> overlays was ex/vi. Again, as I recall the original wnj version by
> then was such a mess, getting a new/cleaner code base was a large
> impetus for Keith to start writing nvi).
ex/vi didn't use overlays (unless you count split I/D). It fit in 64
bits by using ifdefs. Less useful code, like supporting upper-case-only
terminals, would be ifdeffed out on the pdp11.
Mary Ann
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20200529/d23da16b/attachment.htm>
More information about the TUHS
mailing list