[TUHS] unix v4 tape found

[Matt Day via TUHS]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 9:59 PM Thalia Archibald wrote:
> The V5 manual is dated June 1974 (anyone know a better date?), same as
our tape.

The V5 man page for sort(1) is dated 6/11/74:
http://squoze.net/UNIX/v5man/man1/sort

The Utah tape's usr/source/s2/sort.c is dated 6/10/1974 and lacks support
for the -b and -t flags that are documented in the 6/11/74 man page.

The Fifth Edition UNIX Programmer's Manual (Dennis_v5) includes these man
pages, but these commands are missing from the Utah tape:
- eqn(1) dated 2/22/74
- neqn(1) dated 4/30/74
- spell(1) dated 2/26/74
- col(6) dated 5/20/74
(this list is probably incomplete)

Thank you, Thalia!

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 9:59 PM Thalia Archibald <thalia at archibald.dev>
wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 9:28 PM Matt Day wrote:
> > At a glance it looks like Fifth Edition to me... all the files are
> > timestamped June 10 - 12, 1974.
>
> We received the tape in June 1974, due to delay in printing more
> documentation.
> The documentation we received must have been for V4, since the label says
> to
> “see manual for format”, written later by Jay Lepreau, the OS researcher in
> whose documents it was found. Furthermore, the blue embossed label on the
> side
> says UNIX V4 DIST, which I presume was put there by Bell Labs.
>     https://archive.org/details/thompson_to_newell_1974-05-31
>
> UNIX wasn’t versioned as we know it today. In the early days, when you
> wanted to
> cut a tape, you’d ask Ken if it was a good day—whether the system was
> relatively
> bug-free—and copy off the research machine. The manuals were versioned and
> you
> got whatever the last one was.
>
> The V5 manual is dated June 1974 (anyone know a better date?), same as our
> tape.
> I suspect the next manual was finished days or weeks after this was sent,
> so
> this may perhaps be the most extreme drift in an extant copy of UNIX
> between the
> manual features and the shipped features.
>
> The Dennis_v5 distribution on TUHS is dated 21 March 1975, just two months
> away
> from the May 1975 release of the V6 manual. (Which explains why I found it
> so
> close to V6 when I studied it.) The Utah “V4” is a much cleaner V5 than
> the V5
> we have. I’ve had been saying It’s probably V5 minus a tiny bit, which
> turned
> out to be quite true.
>
> Thalia
>