[TUHS] On computerese

[arnold at skeeve.com]

I think it was only Plan 9. The change was motivated by the
rc shell, which treated x=y anywhere on the command line (not just
at the beginning of a command) as a variable assignment.

(For a while I used Byron's rc. I was used to typing

	echo ===============

to generate separator lines. rc threw a syntax error at me. :-)

Arnold

Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't remember whether late Research Unix had -if, but Plan 9 certainly
> did.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:06 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> > On Monday, September 16th, 2024 at 4:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50,
> > the
> > > > > moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL mode.
> > > >
> > > > Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
> > >
> > >
> > > Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu.
> >
> > Never seen that either, POSIX doesn't suggest any support for that either,
> > with this in the RATIONALE section:
> >
> > ---QUOTE---
> >
> > The OPTIONS section is listed as "None" because there are no options
> > recognized by historical dd utilities. Certainly, many of the operands
> > could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would
> > have resulted in the classic hyphenated option letters. In this version of
> > this volume of POSIX.1-2024, dd retains its curious JCL-like syntax due to
> > the large number of applications that depend on the historical
> > implementation.
> >
> > ---END QUOTE---
> >
> > - Matt G.
> >