[TUHS] Etymology of dsw(1)

Mantas Mikulėnas grawity at gmail.com
Sat Sep 13 06:18:01 AEST 2014


On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 11:11 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Dave Horsfall scripsit:
>
>> Delete from Switch Register (delete file whose i-num is in CSR)
>
> There's no doubt that this is right, but
> <http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/18/a-bit-of-history> claims
> that the switch register was set to the number of files to skip over
> before dumping core.  If you resumed the core dump, the next file would
> be deleted.  This allowed deleting files whose names could not be typed.

This reminds me of a similar discussion thirty-three years ago:

http://article.olduse.net/125@Auiucdcs.UUCP
http://article.olduse.net/19@Aresearch.UUCP
http://article.olduse.net/20@Aresearch.UUCP

...which seems to confirm the "nth file" version.


(Also, hi everyone. First post here. Possibly the only, though.)

-- 
Mantas Mikulėnas <grawity at gmail.com>



More information about the TUHS mailing list