[TUHS] Where did the "~" come from
Dave Horsfall
dave at horsfall.org
Thu Nov 19 08:41:29 AEST 2020
On Wed, 18 Nov 2020, Clem Cole wrote:
> In our exchange, someone observed suggested that Joy might have picked
> it up because the HOME key was part of the tilde key on the ADM3A, which
> were popular at UCB [i.e. the reason hjkl are the movement keys on vi is
> the were embossed on the top of those keys on the ADM3A]. It also was
> noted that the ASR-33 lacks a ~ key on its keyboard. But Lesk
> definitely needed something to represent a remote user's home directory
> because each system was different, so he was forced to use something.
The ADM-3A was one of the best terminals ever made.
> It was also noted that there was plenty of cross-pollination going on as
> students and researchers moved from site to site, so it could have been BTL
> to UCB, vice-versa, or some other path altogether.
>
> So two questions for this august body are:
> 1. Where did the ~ as $HOME convention come to UNIX?
Gawd... I think I saw it in PWB, but I'm likely wrong.
> 2. Did UNIX create the idiom, or was there an earlier system such as CTSS,
> TENEX, ITS, MTS, TSS, or the like supported it?
No idea. but given that Unix inherited a lot of stuff....
-- Dave
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