[TUHS] A portrait of cut(1)

[Brian Walden]

Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> writes:
>markus schnalke <meillo at marmaro.de> writes:
>> [2015-11-09 08:58] Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu>
>>> things like "cut" and "paste", whose exact provenance
>>> I can't recall.
>>
>> Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to share my portrait of
>> cut(1) with you. (I sent some questions to this list, a few
>> months ago, remember?) Now, here it is:
>>
>>      http://marmaro.de/docs/freiesmagazin/cut/cut.en.pdf
>
>Did you happen to find out what GWRL stands for, in the the comments at
>the top of early versions of cut.c and paste.c?
>
>/* cut : cut and paste columns of a table (projection of a relation) (GWRL) */
>/* Release 1.5; handles single backspaces as produced by nroff    */
>/* paste: concatenate corresponding lines of each file in parallel. Release 1.4 (GWRL) */
>/*        (-s option: serial concatenation like old (127's) paste command */
>
>For that matter, what's the "old (127's) paste command" it refers to?

I know this thread is almost 5 years old, I came across it searching for
something else But as no one could answer these questions back then, I can.

GWRL stands for Gottfried W. R. Luderer, the author of cut(1) and paste(1),
probably around 1978.  Those came either from PWB or USG, as he worked with,
or for, Berkley Tague. Thus they made their way into AT&T commercial UNIX,
first into System III and the into System V, and that's why they are missing
from early BSD releases as they didn't get into Research UNIX until the
8th Edition.  Also "127" was the internal department number for the Computer
Science Research group at Bell Labs where UNIX originated

Dr. Luderer co-authored this paper in the orginal 1978 BSTJ on UNIX --
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Papers/BSTJ/bstj57-6-2201.pdf

I knew Dr. Luderer and he was even kind enough to arrange for me stay with his
relatives for a few days in Braunschweig, West Germany (correct county name for
the time) on my first trip to Europe many decades ago. But haven't had contact nor
even thought of him forever until I saw his initials. I also briefly worked for Berk
when he was the department head for 45263 in Whippany Bell Labs before moving to
Murray Hill.

And doing a quick search for him, it looks like he wrote and autobiograhy, which I
am now going to have to purchase
http://www.lulu.com/shop/gottfried-luderer/go-west-young-german/paperback/product-23385772.html?ppn=1

-Brian