[TUHS] sh: cmd | >file

[Adam Thornton]

v7 Bourne shell does not appear to treat '#' as a comment.

I've built termlib and curses for v7 and am now trying to find a small
screen editor.  I was trying se, but the version I have ships as a shell
archive, and it doesn't actually unpack on v7, in part because of the
comments.

v7 is a target in Jove's Ovmakefile, so that's what I'm trying now.
Slow-pasting uuencoded files into the terminal is gross, but efficacious....

Adam

On Sat, Jan 4, 2020 at 5:48 PM Eric Allman <tuhs at eric.allman.name> wrote:

> I contacted Steve --- he is on the list, and says he'll weigh in.
>
> eric
>
>
> On 2020-01-04 13:06, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> > Dave Horsfall writes:
> >> On Sat, 4 Jan 2020, markus schnalke wrote:
> >>
> >>> My question was not about the use cases for ``>file'' but *why* it was
> >>> made a simple command. Let me explain:
> >>>
> >>> One creates an empty file or truncates a file with:
> >>>
> >>>     >file
> >>>
> >>> why not with:
> >>>
> >>>     :>file
> >>> ?
> >>>
> >>> To me it looks to be the more sensible ... more regular way.
> >>
> >> The Unix philosophy, perhaps i.e. keep it simple?  Why have ":" (an
> actual
> >> internal Shell command) when "" (the null command) will do the job?
> >>
> >> I guess only the Bell Labs bods here can answer this.
> >>
> >> -- Dave
> >
> > Don't know if Steve Bourne is on this list, but he's been a great source
> > of information when I've had questions about why the shell did things the
> > way it did.
> >
> > Jon
> >
>
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