[TUHS] Bourne shell and comments

[Clem Cole]

below...

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> I believe the Berkeley #! magic number came first.

​That's right....​ the #!path syntax was BSDism that went main stream
because of its usefulness with "little languages" not just the shell.
 I'd have to check the tapes but it may have gone back as far as the
original BSD ~77/78 - Ken would have brought it back after his sabbatical
(or not - he would have seen it).

The # was nod to the # being the first characters of the C program to say
to use the preprocessor; but I've forgotten why the bang was added before
the path.    It could have been almost anything.

But the #!path syntax really was a great idea and opened up a lot of
different pseudo built-in scripting languages we think go with UNIX today.
But back in the day, their were not that many to start.




> The C Shell already
> ​ ​
> used this as a comment,

​exactly.​


> the Bourne shells grudgingly followed.
>
​Yep - although, like Warren I don't remember how soon.   The thing was you
programmed to V7 [Bourne] syntax and typed to C shell [I still do - the
rom's in the my fingers are not erasable].   I do remember commenting
Bourne scripts, so it must have come early in the Vax line, although its
strange the 2.x did not pick it up, until it seems 2.11 which is pretty
late.



>
> I still remember using : for a comment in the V6 shell.   Was also the
> label
> for goto.
>
​Yep - I remember that also - it worked...
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