<div dir="auto"><div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 9:37 PM Norman Wilson <<a href="mailto:norman@oclsc.org">norman@oclsc.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Clem Cole:<br>
<br>
> Apologies to TUHS - other than please don't think Fortran did not<br>
> impact UNIX and its peers.<br>
<br>
Fortran had an important (if indirect) influence in early Unix. From<br>
Dennis's memories of the early days of Unix on the PDP-7:<br>
<br>
Soon after TMG became available, Thompson decided that we could not<br>
pretend to offer a real computing service without Fortran, so he sat<br>
down to write a Fortran in TMG. As I recall, the intent to handle<br>
Fortran lasted about a week. What he produced instead was a definition<br>
of and a compiler for the new language B.<br>
<br>
(The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing System; see the 1984<br>
UNIX System issue of the BLTJ for the whole thing, or just read<br>
<a href="https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html</a>)<br>
<br>
Now let's move on to the name `rc'. Not the shell, but the<br>
usage as part of a file name. Those two characters appear<br>
at the end of the many annoying, and mostly pointless, configuration<br>
files that litter one's home directory these days, apparently<br>
copied from the old system-startup script /etc/rc as if the<br>
name means `startup commands' (or something beginning with r,<br>
I suppose, instead of startup). But I recall reading somewhere<br>
that it just stood for `runcom,' a Multics-derived term for what<br>
we now call a shell script.<br>
<br>
I can't find a citation to back up that claim, though. Anyone<br>
else remember where to look?<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Not a citation, either, but I believe the original RUNCOM came from CTSS (<a href="https://multicians.org/shell.html">https://multicians.org/shell.html</a>), and MDN-4 on the design of the Multics shell mentions the term and MDN-5 goes into detail here.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Newer Multics calls this "exec_com", as in the shell startup file `<a href="http://start_up.ec">start_up.ec</a>` that Multics users have in their login directories. <a href="https://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics/doc/info_segments/exec_com.info">https://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics/doc/info_segments/exec_com.info</a></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"> - Dan C.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div>