[TUHS] UNIX or unix

Paco López pc.lpz.snchz at gmail.com
Sun Nov 10 05:43:59 AEST 2019


An excerpt from The Jargon File:

Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately ‘UNIX’ or
‘Unix’; both forms are common, and used interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie
says that the ‘UNIX’ spelling originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper The
UNIX Time-Sharing System because “we had a new typesetter and troff had
just been invented and we were intoxicated by being able to produce small
caps.” Later, dmr tried to get the spelling changed to ‘Unix’ in a couple
of Bell Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He
failed, and eventually (his words) “wimped out” on the issue. So, while the
trademark today is ‘UNIX’, both capitalizations are grounded in ancient
usage; the Jargon File uses ‘Unix’ in deference to dmr's wishes.

at: http://catb.org/jargon/html/U/Unix.html

El sáb., 9 nov. 2019 a las 17:28, Nemo Nusquam (<cym224 at gmail.com>)
escribió:

> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50
> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/).
> As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from
> seemingly knowledgeable people.
>
> One comment
> (
> https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977),
>
> from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it
> "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS.  Anyone care to
> comment on this?
>
> N.
>
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