> C's refusal to specify dynamic memory allocation in the language runtime
> (as opposed to, eventually, the standard library)
This complaint overlooks one tenet of C: every operation in what you
call "language runtime" takes O(1) time. Dynamic memory allocation
is not such an operation.
Your hobbyhorse awakened one of mine.
malloc was in v7, before the C standard was written. The standard
spinelessly buckled to allow malloc(0) to return 0, as some
implementations gratuitously did. I can't imagine that any program
ever actually wanted the feature. Now it's one more undefined
behavior that lurks in thousands of programs.
There are two arguments for malloc(0), Most importantly, it caters for
a limiting case for aggregates generated at runtime--an instance of
Kernighan's Law, "Do nothing gracefully". It also provides a way to
create a distinctive pointer to impart some meta-information, e.g.
"TBD" or "end of subgroup", distinct from the null pointer, which
merely denotes absence.
Doug
All, I got this e-mail and thought many of you would appreciate the link.
Cheers, Warren
----- Forwarded message from Poul-Henning Kamp -----
I stumbled over this:
https://www.telecomarchive.com/lettermemo.html
is the TUHS crew aware of that resource ?
----- End forwarded message -----
> Who created the "cat" command and did they have the
> word "catenate" or "concatenate" in their heads?
Ken Thompson wrote "cat" for the PDP-7, with "concatenate" in
mind. The cat(1) page in the v1 manual is titled, "concatenate (or
print) files". Only later did someone in Research--I don't know
who--remark on the existence of the shorter synonym. It was
deliberately adopted in v7, perhaps because it better mirrored
the command name.
But brevity is the defensible argument for "catenate", while
familiarity boosts "concatenate". It stll takes some conscious
effort for me to use the former, However, I sense sinister
vibes in "concatenate", driven by the phrase "concatenation
of events", which often is used to explain misfortune.
Doug
>>> malloc(0) isn't undefined behaviour but implementation defined.
>>
>> In modern C there is no difference between those two concepts.
> Can you explain more about your view
There certainly is a difference, but in this case the practical
implications are the same: avoid malloc(0). malloc(0) lies at the high end
of a range of severity of concerns about implementation-definedness. At the
low end are things like the size of ints, which only affects applications
that may confront very large numbers. In the middle is the default
signedness of chars, which generally may be mitigated by explicit type
declarations.
For the size of ints, C offers guardrails like INT_MAX. There is no test to
discern what an error return from malloc(0) means.
Is there any other C construct that implementation-definedness renders
useless?
Doug
I'm wondering if there are places where people who were in the Unix
Room wrote about the origins and evolution of what people (at least
used to(*)) refer to as "Unix Philosophy", and since some are in THIS
(TUHS) room, what they might have to say about it.
How much was in reaction to the complexity of Multics, and how much
was simply a response to the limited address spaces of
available and affordable hardware?
Eric S. Raymond wrote in "The Art of Unix Programming" quoting
Doug McIlroy and Rob Pike:
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html
And I wonder if they care to comment on it?
I have trouble taking ESR as authoritative, as, it seems to me that
Research Unix was more a product of the "Cathedral" (or at least a
contained community) than the "Bazaar" (at least the modern bazaar,
where everyone needs to leave a new feature grafito on the town
walls), and ESR
A side question for Rob Pike, is the "Not only is UNIX dead, it's
starting to smell really bad." quote accurate? Was it in reaction to
BSD, GNU, or all of the above?
(*) I say "used to", because, for the most part, minimalism seems to
have left the building. I can't look at modern GNU utilities, and
many, if not most open source packages and think they've gone WAY past
classic Unix minimalism, especially since I remember hearing that Bell
Research had happily stripped excess features (removal of "cat -s"
sticks in my mind) from later day research Unix, and because Stallman
is said to have coined the term "New Jersey" style as a synonym for
what Richard P. Gabriel called "Worse is Better", which seems, an
attack on minimalism (nothing less than "the right thing" is acceptable)
Worse is.... readings:
https://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.htmlhttps://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.htmlhttps://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdfhttps://dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf
Anti-flamage disclainmers:
Inclusion of links above does not imply any agreement on my part! My
apologies in advance for any offense, misquote, or misunderstanding on
my part.
> 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
> I wonder what happened to the amazing library at Murray Hill.
Last I knew, the Bell Labs archives were intact under supervision of a
professional archivist. Formally speaking, the archives and the library
were distinct entities. The library, which was open to self service 24
hours a day, declined rapidly after the bean counters decreed that it
should henceforth support itself on rental fees. Departments immediately
turned to buying books rather than borrowing them. It's very likely that
this was bad for the Labs' bottom line, but the cost (both monetary and
intellectual) was not visible as a budgetary line item.
The 24-hour library contributed to one of Ken's programming feats. Spurred
by a lunchtime remark that it would be nice to have a unit-conversion
program, Ken announced units(1) the next morning. Right from the start, the
program knew more than 200 units, thanks to a book Ken grabbed from the
library in the middle of the night.
Doug
> That CSTR number 1 is nicely formatted, is that troff?
The archive's CSTR 1 is ersatz. It's a 1973 journal article obtained from
JSTOR. I imagine the manuscript was largely copied from the CSTR, but the
printed paper certainly differs in meta-content and in layout, say nothing
of font. Having gone through the usual route of journal submission and
revision, the body text is probably not word-for-word identical to the CSTR
either.
Doug
Clem Cole:
Interesting -- 'Jason' had always been a Pascal hacker when the strip was
first created. As I recall, Berkeley Breathed had Wendell (his hacker
character) comment on that during the time of Pascal/C Wars.
====
But Jason later was revealed to be wearing Unix underpants:
https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2002/02/25
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
