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

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 2:31 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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.
>

TOPS-20 used @. RSTS/E used Ready.

Warner

> ᐧ
>
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