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

[Clem Cole]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 12:01 PM, Gilles Gravier <gilles at gravier.org> wrote:

> Caveat emptor: I haven't read all the messages on this thread. :)
>
> But... I remember the VMS prompt being "$"... maybe some ancestry since
> VMS dates back to 1970
>
Be careful .. VMS 1.0 was released in the late 1970s, we had Vax serial #1
at CMU - I want to say 1976 or 77.  Dave's Command Language (DCL - renamed
DEC Command Language by DEC marketing) was originally part of an earlier
RSX and yes used $ as the prompt.

But numerous systems used $ and many of the other punctuation chars as a
prompt.

We'll have to ask srb, but I'm fair confident in stating VMS had no bearing
on his choice of a command prompt (I'm fairly sure VMS was not release by
the time he came to the Labs).   I would have expected if it was taking it
from another system (which is possible) it would have been on the British
ones in use at Cambridge before he came to BTL.
ᐧ
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