[TUHS] the first busybox

[Marc Donner via TUHS]

Thank you, Diomidis, for finding evidence in the source.  I guess Obi-wan
was right - "Use the source, Luke."
=====
[I write my own messages.  Never from AI.]
exploringaimatters.com
nygeek.net


On Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 3:29 PM Diomidis Spinellis <dds at aueb.gr> wrote:

> 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.
> >>
>
>