[TUHS] the first busybox

[Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS]

The ex editor appeared in BSD 1, whereas compress appeared in BSD 4.3 
[1].  The ex source code looks for 'd' in second or third string 
position of the command invocation name [2] to change its behavior to 
edit or nedit [3].  In this mode, ex disables some magic regular 
expression characters, enables some notifications, and disables the open 
and visual commands [4].  I couldn't find in the BSD 1 code for invoking 
ex in visual mode as vi, although vi is documented as a synonym for ex.

[1] https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-history-man/man1.html
[2] 
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Development/ex-1.1/ex.c#L30
[3] 
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Development/ex-1.1/READ_ME#L165
[4] https://begriffs.com/pdf/ex-manual.pdf#page=3

Diomidis - https://www.spinellis.gr

On 22-Oct-26 20:24, Marc Donner via TUHS wrote:
> When Ken and Dennis created exec() they established the convention that
> argv[0] held the name by which the program was called.  Early uses of the
> argv[0] value to adjust behavior was reported with ex and vi as well as
> compress and uncompress in the 1970s.  I bet we have source references for
> that somewhere.
> =====
> [I write my own messages.  Never from AI.]
> exploringaimatters.com
> nygeek.net
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 12:12 PM Dan Cross via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 1:46 AM ron minnich via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
>> wrote:
>>> The first busybox I recall using was on Sun systems (SuntTools?) where
>> many
>>> window applications were linked into one binary.
>>>
>>> I may have got the various names wrong; it's been 35 years. But I'm
>>> wondering: did something predate that?
>>>
>>> What was the "first busybox"?
>>
>> I remember seeing something like that with "miniroots", that were
>> meant to be written to a swap partition from a standalone loader, and
>> then you'd boot from swap.  I think the IBM RT used that to do
>> installation, or possibly very low-level repair of a busted
>> filesystem.  I doubt that predates the Sun window system, though: IBM
>> was late getting thus underpowered boat anchors to market, so I'd
>> imagine the technique was pretty well-known by then.
>>
>>          - Dan C.
>>