[TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view

[Noel Hunt]

Thank you for the correction. Having only used Unix from Seventh
Edition on, research-editions only, I have never used head(1) and
didn't realize it was written so early.


On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 12:38 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Noel.  Pls check the TUHS archives and I think you will see sed does yet
> exist in 6th edition when Joy wrote head in 1977.  Certainly not yet at
> UCB.
>
> On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 9:34 PM Noel Hunt <noel.hunt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > But note that when wnj wrote head(1), Joy followed the
>> > famous `Unix Philosophy' of  doing one (small) job
>> > well.   Which means he did not add a feature *i.e.*
>> > abusing, an old program, like cat(1), and add some new
>> > switch to it that that told the program stop outputting
>> > after n lines.  Instead Joy wrote a simple new tool.
>>
>> He didn't need to abuse any existing program by adding new
>> flags or the like; unless I am mistaken, `sed Nq', for some
>> number `N', does exactly what `head -N' would do on a single
>> file, obviating the very need for head(1).
>>
>>> --
> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
>
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