[TUHS] # (was Re: sh: cmd | >file)

[Bakul Shah]

> On Jan 7, 2020, at 9:20 PM, Brian Walden <tuhs at cuzuco.com> wrote:
> 
> Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Jan 2020, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> 
>>> In Algol68  # ... # is one of the forms for block comments!
>> 
>> Interesting...  All we had at university though was ALGOL W (as far as I
>> know; there were several languages that mere students could not use, such
>> as FORTRAN H).
> 
> Yes, but when was it implemented? Kernighan is first ever if it is not
> before 1974. So I decided to look and it took me down a rabbit hole of
> ALGOL taht leads back to Bourne shell and then right back to # (but in C)

Tanenbaum’s “A tutorial on Algol 68” published in Computing Surveys, June 1976
mentions that # is one of the (four) ways a comment may be enclosed.

https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/74119499/11057

An earlier paper “Algol68 with fewer tears” by C H Lindsey, 1972
also mentions # as an alternate symbol.

https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/15/2/176/1002964/15-2-176.pdf