[TUHS] Just noticed an article on John Lions on Salon.com

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Monday, 12 April 2004 at 15:29:36 -0700, Michael Davidson wrote:
>> Hello from Gregg C Levine
>> An interesting discourse on the subject of the gentleman's books. I
>> haven't found them, as yet. However, I did find one discrepancy in the
>> article. I suppose Dennis Ritchie will comment eventually, but, here
>> goes, his name, and Brian Kernighan are mentioned on my copy of the
>> book on the C programming language. The only time I've seen the other
>> fellow's name mentioned was in regards to another book on UNIX.
>
> I'm not sure what discrepancy you are referring to - the article looked
> quite accurate to me.
>
> Which particular "other fellow" are you thinking of?

On Monday, 12 April 2004 at 19:40:31 -0400, Gregg C Levine wrote:
> Hello from Gregg C Levine
> Um this fellow, Ken Thompson. According to my copy of the book on the
> C programming language, only Brian Kernighan, and David Ritchie, are
> mentioned. Ken Thompson, is only mentioned as being a partner in the
> creation of UNIX,

Not that I'm a great believer in religion, but this comes close to
sacrilege.  I would have thought that people on this forum (you,
Gregg, certainly included) would have known that ken and dmr (to use
their login names) are so much the basis of UNIX that up to and
including the Sixth Edition the directory tree was divided into two
directories named after them:

   === root at wantadilla (/dev/ttyp1) /home/grog 24 -> cd /src/UNIX/Sixth-Edition/
   === root at wantadilla (/dev/ttyp1) /src/UNIX/Sixth-Edition 25 -> ls -l usr/sys/
   total 1
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   3016 Jul 18  1975 buf.h
   dr-xr-xr-x  2 grog  wheel    512 Jul 19  1975 conf
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    916 May 14  1975 conf.h
   dr-xr-xr-x  2 grog  wheel    512 Jul 18  1975 dmr
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    407 May 14  1975 file.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    949 May 14  1975 filsys.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    533 May 14  1975 ino.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   1693 Jul 18  1975 inode.h
   dr-xr-xr-x  2 grog  wheel    512 Jul 18  1975 ken
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel  58990 Jul 18  1975 lib1
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel  45578 Jul 18  1975 lib2
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   2147 May 14  1975 param.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   1481 Jul 18  1975 proc.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    274 May 14  1975 reg.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    900 Jul 18  1975 run
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    533 Jul 18  1975 seg.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   1749 May 14  1975 systm.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel    380 May 14  1975 text.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   2320 May 14  1975 tty.h
   -r--r--r--  1 grog  wheel   2842 Jul 18  1975 user.h
   === root at wantadilla (/dev/ttyp1) /src/UNIX/Sixth-Edition 26 -> 

"The other fellow" indeed!  As dmr says, he wrote more code than he
and Kernighan put together (though in this source tree their input is
remarkably balanced).

On Monday, 12 April 2004 at 20:01:26 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
>   Hello from Gregg C Levine
>   Um this fellow, Ken Thompson. According to my copy of the book on the
>   C programming language, only Brian Kernighan, and David Ritchie, are
>   mentioned. Ken Thompson, is only mentioned as being a partner in the
>   creation of UNIX, I think he was a co-author in the book mentioned in
>   titles pages, describing the UNIX programming environment.
>
> Ken's name is on a number of interesting papers from the early days of
> UNIX, including the original one in CACM, but so far as I can remember
> he was never the official author or co-author of a UNIX book.  You may
> be thinking of `The UNIX Programming Environment,' by Kernighan and Pike.
>
> I suppose those who don't know both Ken Thompson and Rob Pike might
> confuse them, especially since (I think) they both reside in the Bay
> Area now.

I've never seen ken without a beard, though there's a photo of him
without one taken a very long time ago.  I've never seen Rob Pike with
a beard.

> They are certainly different people; I have seen them in the same
> room many times.

Ah, the marvels of time-sharing!

Greg
--
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