[TUHS] Other Bell Labs shells from the 80s?

[Arnold Robbins via TUHS]

Thanks Marc.

Warren, can this go into the archive?

It seems that with the invetion of /dev/fd, David Korn managed to
provide a notation for non-linear pipelines:

	diff <(pipeline1) <(pipeline2)

sets up the two pipelines, with the standard output of each
dup'ed to different file descriptors and diff sees something like

	diff /dev/fd/41 /dev/fd/42

Bash provides this, and will use FIFOs if /dev/fd isn't available.

I'm not sure it counts as fully two dimensional.

Thanks,

Arnold

Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:

> The 2dsh shell came up in a discussion some months ago here, and Doug
> McIlroy kindly provided me with a copy of the memo, which I've attached.
>
> I'm sure the source is long gone. It was really just a hobby research
> project for me. (I spent part of my time at Bell Labs horsing around. What
> a great place to work!)
>
> Marc
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2026 at 2:57 AM Arnold Robbins via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hello all.
> >
> > The CL memo was interesting, in a way.  The notations are clearly
> > much more verbose than the standard shell, and I found that a little
> > off-putting.
> >
> > The memo's references refer to Marc Rochkind's 2dsh --- Marc, whatever
> > happened to that? Are source and or the memo for it available somewhere?
> >
> > Also it refers to a shell by Blewett and arder called Parser. Anyone
> > have that memo?
> >
> > Just wondering,
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Arnold
> >