[TUHS] The UNIX Command Language (1976)

[Ben Walton]

On Thu 3 Dec 2020, 20:43 Larry McVoy, <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 03, 2020 at 09:37:17PM +0100, Niklas Karlsson wrote:
> > Den tors 3 dec. 2020 kl 21:32 skrev M Douglas McIlroy <
> > m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu>:
> >
> > > There's a back story. The paper appears in the proceedings  of a
> > > conference held in London in 1973, a few months after the advent of
> > > pipes. While preparing the presentation, Ken was inspired to invent
> > > and install the pipe operator. His talk wouldn't have been nearly as
> > > compelling had it been expressed in the original pipeline syntax (for
> > > which I take the blame).
> > >
> >
> > Now I'm curious. Is there anywhere I can read about the original pipeline
> > syntax? I tried searching a bit, but the only mention that was even
> vaguely
> > informative only stated that > was involved.
>
> Wasn't there a version that was
>
>         cat whatever ^ wc -l
>
> ?
>

Yes, that's it. And you'll still find[1] that /bin/sh on (at least?)
Solaris honors that syntax. That's one reason why the git test suite fails
on Solaris without being pushed to use a modern shell implementation.

Thanks
-Ben

[1] At least up to Solaris 10. I've not used newer.
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