[TUHS] Oldest Unix source code still in modern systems

Dave Horsfall dave at horsfall.org
Tue May 22 17:35:10 AEST 2012


On Mon, 21 May 2012, Michael Davidson wrote:

>       /*
>       * you are not expected to understand this.
>       */

Line 2238, of course :-)  For any youngsters here, that code is *subtle*.  
Vale, both DMR and Dr John Lions (my lecturer at UNSW).

> That would certainly still be appropriate for the Linux context switch 
> code which, last time I looked, was a horrible mess of gcc "asm" 
> constructs glued together with C preprocessor macros.

Typical Penguin/OS.  I am in stitches.

> The comment that I miss most, however, is:
> 
> /*
>  * printf should not be used for chit chat
>  */

My favourite too :-)  We ended up implementing the call via the TTY
interface, so that our 11/40 would not be brought to her knees.

-- Dave



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