[TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS)

Norman Wilson norman at oclsc.org
Sun Jul 10 11:41:08 AEST 2016


Dave Horsfall:

  I still remember when the pipe command was "^" (pointy hat).

====

I still remember--barely--when \136 was up-arrow, not carat!

I don't think pipe was ever only ^, but that ^ was a
synonym for | added to make it easier to use on older
upper-case terminals that had no |.  Those (remaining
few) who were there at the time can perhaps clarify.

I still habitually quote shell arguments containing ^,
even though I haven't used a shell that required that
since late 1984 (Rob had removed the special meaning
from /bin/sh before I arrived at Bell Labs).  On the
other hand, I still cannot be bothered to get used to
quoting arguments containing !; I just disable all
that history and editing bloatware whenever possible.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON



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