[TUHS] Pipes (was Re: After 50 years, what has the Impact of Unix been?)

[arnold at skeeve.com]

Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> My claim is simply that extant shell syntax isn't really amenable to
> this in a natural way. As Chet and Arnold pointed out, process
> substitution as pioneered in ksh gets us a little closer, but it's not
> quite as general (I believe any such graphs would have to be acyclic);
> it's certainly not as syntactically pleasant.
>
> There has been work along these lines; I was sent a reference off-list
> to a paper by Spinellis and Fragkoulis about a DAG-oriented shell:
> https://www.spinellis.gr/sw/dgsh/, which seems relevant.

In the early-to-mid 1980s, the Georgia Tech Software Tools Subsystem
for Prime Computers offered three standard inputs, three standard
outputs, and a shell with syntax to connect things as you desired.
I don't remember the syntax though.  I also don't know how much
this feature was really used.

Arnold