25 Jul
2022
25 Jul
'22
3:44 a.m.
Hi,
long time lurker here. Today I ended up on an article by Christian Lee Seibold about the
origin of shells [1].
Coincidentally the article explained how the “rc” files came to be and why they’re called
“rc”: everything started with RUNCOM and Multics. An excerpt from the article:
====
Unix Shells have had a very long history, and it all starts with a program written by
Louis Pouzin for the MIT CTSS Operating System, called RUNCOM (which stood for “run
commands”). It executed commands from a file, called “a runcom”. According to Kernighan
and Ritchie[1], “rc” configuration files from Unix descended from this. Tom Van Vleck also
gives origins of Unix’s use of “rc” to RUNCOM [2], and notes that the first time he read
the term “shell” was from Multics documentation created by Doug Eastwood. According to
Louis Pouzin, he coined the word “shell”.
====
Well, now I know…
[1] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/auragem.space/~krixano/ShellHistory-Unix.pdf
— Michelangelo