[TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #

[Henry Bent]

On 6 August 2018 at 17:16, <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> The early shells (Thompson, Mashey)  used "% " for regular user (and # for
> root).   The Thompson shell didn't have a setable prompt.
> The Bourne shell (V7) had setable PS1 (start of command) and PS2
> (continuation prompts) and set the to "$ " and "> " respectively.    Again
> # was used for root


Okay, but why did Bourne switch from "%" to "$"?  Was it to inform the user
that they were using the new shell as opposed to the old one, or was there
some other reasoning behind the switch?

-Henry
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