[TUHS] etymology of read -u

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/31/16 3:27 AM, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> What's the mnmonic significance, if any, of the u in
> the bash builtin read -u for reading from a specified
> file descriptor? Evidently both f and d had already been
> taken in analogy to usage in some other commands.
> 
> The best I can think of is u as in "tape unit", which
> was common usage back in the days of READ INPUT TAPE 5.
> That would make it the work of an old timer, maybe Dave Korn?

I picked it up from ksh many years ago, and assumed at the time that it
meant `unit'.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/