From jacob.ritorto at gmail.com Fri Oct 11 02:52:34 2019 From: jacob.ritorto at gmail.com (Jacob Ritorto) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:52:34 -0400 Subject: [COFF] subscribe Message-ID: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michael at kjorling.se Mon Oct 14 06:05:16 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2019 20:05:16 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Linux & UNIX Humble Bundle of ebooks Message-ID: Here's something I think some people here just might be interested in. Humble Bundle is offering (for another just over a week; until 2019-10-21 18:00 -11:00) a "Linux & UNIX" ebook bundle from O'Reilly, consisting of: (at USD 1.00 or more) - Classic Shell Scripting, 1st Edition - Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition - Introducing Regular Expressions, 1st Edition - grep Pocket Reference, 1st Edition - Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition - Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition (at USD 8.00 or more, all the above _plus_) - Learning the bash Shell, 3rd Edition - Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition - Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition - sed & awk, 2nd Edition (at USD 15.00 or more, all the above _plus_) - bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition - Linux System Programming, 2nd Edition - Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition - Effective awk Programming, 4th Edition - Linux Pocket Guide, 3rd Edition All in .mobi, .pdf and .epub formats, free of DRM. Some of the proceeds from this offering go to Code for America. No affiliation; just a happy customer. https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-unix-oreilly-books -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor) From peter at rulingia.com Tue Oct 22 20:29:52 2019 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 21:29:52 +1100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Space Travel, was New: The Earliest UNIX Code In-Reply-To: References: <201910191440.x9JEe8PB035921@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: <20191022102952.GC51849@server.rulingia.com> [Redirecting to COFF] On 2019-Oct-20 00:02:56 +0530, Abhinav Rajagopalan wrote: >Forgive me for both hijacking this thread, and to address my amateurish >gnawing concern, but how was it be possible to write differential/integral >equations at an assembly/machine level at the time, especially in machines >such as the PDP-7 and such which had IIRC just 16 instructions and operated >on the basis of mere words, especially the floating point math being done. My 1st edition Wilkes, Wheeler, Gill[1] documents that, by 1951, EDSAC[2] had a floating-point library that supported addition, subtraction and multiplication (no division) of numbers with 23-27 bits of precision and a range of 1e-63 to 1e63. EDSAC was much less powerful than a PDP-7. Writing a floating-point library is not that difficult, though getting the rounding correct for all the edge cases is tricky. Actually using floating-point and avoiding the pitfalls can be harder - see (eg) https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html (though https://floating-point-gui.de/ may be more approachable). [1] https://archive.org/details/programsforelect00wilk [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSAC -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 963 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Tue Oct 29 04:47:33 2019 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 05:47:33 +1100 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] UNIX Backslash History In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 28 Oct 2019, Steve Nickolas wrote: > 86-DOS actually did use ":" as a prompt character. This was changed for > IBM's release, for some clone releases, and for MS-DOS 2.0. The best I've ever seen was RT-11's "." - talk about minimalist... Actually this thread probably belongs on COFF by now. -- Dave From lars at nocrew.org Tue Oct 29 05:10:30 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:10:30 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: (Dave Horsfall's message of "Tue, 29 Oct 2019 05:47:33 +1100 (EST)") References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Dave Horsfall wrote: > Steve Nickolas wrote: >> 86-DOS actually did use ":" as a prompt character. > The best I've ever seen was RT-11's "." - talk about minimalist... > > Actually this thread probably belongs on COFF by now. I was bound to happen. List all the prompts! "*" seems popular on PDP-10s. From imp at bsdimp.com Tue Oct 29 05:57:01 2019 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:57:01 -0600 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 1:51 PM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > Dave Horsfall wrote: > > Steve Nickolas wrote: > >> 86-DOS actually did use ":" as a prompt character. > > The best I've ever seen was RT-11's "." - talk about minimalist... > > > > Actually this thread probably belongs on COFF by now. > > I was bound to happen. List all the prompts! > > "*" seems popular on PDP-10s. > "@ " was the TOPS-20 prompt. "$ " was the VMS prompt RSTS/E was just "Ready\n" But none of these get us closer to CP/M's > prompt. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jpl.jpl at gmail.com Tue Oct 29 06:29:28 2019 From: jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:29:28 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: A bit off-off-topic, but as I mentioned elsewhere, I was lucky enough to have one of the (if not *the*) first CRT terminals in the Labs. It was an HP 264?, and it supported scrolling back to stored lines, and re-entering them. I quickly settled in on a prompt that ended with "@", the default "line kill", so whatever came before was ignored, and only the command that followed was effectively re-entered. Quaint that "@" was a seldom-seen character then. I now have a prompt that ends with a newline. Still convenient for copy/paste. The prompt itself has colors, separating host name from current directory. This makes it easy to spot non-prompt line in the command line history, and to determine which host I am connected to in that window, and where I am on that host. On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 3:57 PM Warner Losh wrote: > > > On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 1:51 PM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > >> Dave Horsfall wrote: >> > Steve Nickolas wrote: >> >> 86-DOS actually did use ":" as a prompt character. >> > The best I've ever seen was RT-11's "." - talk about minimalist... >> > >> > Actually this thread probably belongs on COFF by now. >> >> I was bound to happen. List all the prompts! >> >> "*" seems popular on PDP-10s. >> > > "@ " was the TOPS-20 prompt. > "$ " was the VMS prompt > RSTS/E was just "Ready\n" > > But none of these get us closer to CP/M's > prompt. > > Warner > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.winalski at gmail.com Tue Oct 29 06:43:16 2019 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:43:16 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] UNIX Backslash History In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: On 10/28/19, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Mon, 28 Oct 2019, Steve Nickolas wrote: > >> 86-DOS actually did use ":" as a prompt character. This was changed for >> IBM's release, for some clone releases, and for MS-DOS 2.0. > > The best I've ever seen was RT-11's "." - talk about minimalist... > > Actually this thread probably belongs on COFF by now. RT-11 was following standard DEC practice by using "." as its command prompt. The "monitor dot" was the command prompt in both TOPS-10 and TOPS-20. Most DEC operating systems, including RT-11, TOPS-10/20, and VMS, used "/" as a prefix on command options; "-" performs this function on UNIX since "/" is the directory delimiter. Back in the days of stand-alone programs, physical switches on the console were used to set program options. This of course won't work when you have multiprogramming. I was told that DEC chose "/" because it looks like a toggle switch. Command options in fact were initially called "switches". -Paul W. From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Oct 29 09:13:54 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:13:54 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: <2daf68cb-1b16-05a5-af0c-6d64778b2da2@kilonet.net> References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <2daf68cb-1b16-05a5-af0c-6d64778b2da2@kilonet.net> Message-ID: Sorry, sent a picture along with this, but it got rejected because it was too big ;) > On 10/28/2019 3:10 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: >> I was bound to happen. List all the prompts! >> "*" seems popular on PDP-10s. > > Que? The only PDP-10 prompt that matters is "." > > The other less-desired (by me) is @ > > art k. From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Oct 29 09:17:52 2019 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:17:52 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] UNIX Backslash History In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: <62c3fa7e-1d77-3cbb-c6b7-f9cd48b3350c@kilonet.net> On 10/28/2019 4:43 PM, Paul Winalski wrote: > RT-11 was following standard DEC practice by using "." as its command > prompt. The "monitor dot" was the command prompt in both TOPS-10 and > TOPS-20. In my many accesses of TOPS-20 systems back in the day, thanks to the ARPANET, I am reasonably certain I never EVER once saw a TOPS-20 system with a "." prompt. art k. From lars at nocrew.org Tue Oct 29 15:32:37 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 05:32:37 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: (Arthur Krewat's message of "Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:13:54 -0400") References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <2daf68cb-1b16-05a5-af0c-6d64778b2da2@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <7wftjc3ymi.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Arthur Krewat wrote: >> "*" seems popular on PDP-10s. > Que? The only PDP-10 prompt that matters is "." I mean programs like MACRO, LINK, etc. From skogtun at gmail.com Tue Oct 29 20:30:05 2019 From: skogtun at gmail.com (Harald Arnesen) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:30:05 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> Warner Losh [28.10.2019 20:57]: > "@  " was the TOPS-20 prompt. Also the Sintran (Norsk Data) prompt. -- Hilsen Harald From skogtun at gmail.com Tue Oct 29 20:32:29 2019 From: skogtun at gmail.com (Harald Arnesen) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:32:29 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> Message-ID: Harald Arnesen [29.10.2019 11:30]: > Warner Losh [28.10.2019 20:57]: > >> "@  " was the TOPS-20 prompt. > > Also the Sintran (Norsk Data) prompt. btw, we used to call it "grisehale" ("pig's tail"). -- Hilsen Harald From michael at kjorling.se Wed Oct 30 05:57:22 2019 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 19:57:22 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: On 28 Oct 2019 13:57 -0600, from imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh): > "@ " was the TOPS-20 prompt. > "$ " was the VMS prompt > RSTS/E was just "Ready\n" > > But none of these get us closer to CP/M's > prompt. For micros, the Apple II used "]", didn't it? That's not exactly a ">" either, but it's somewhat period- and system size-appropriate for early CP/M. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor) From lars at nocrew.org Wed Oct 30 17:01:52 2019 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 07:01:52 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: (Warner Losh's message of "Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:57:01 -0600") References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <7wzhhi1ztr.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Warner Losh wrote: > But none of these get us closer to CP/M's > prompt. To me > suggests an arrow indicating "enter your input here". Pure speculation of course. Interestingly, some ITS programs does the exact opposite. They use the 1963 ASCII character "left arrow" as a prompt. (Today it just outputs as an underscore but printed texts and screenshots show that the 1963 character set was in use.) From tih at hamartun.priv.no Wed Oct 30 18:19:20 2019 From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 09:19:20 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Comparative promptology In-Reply-To: (Harald Arnesen's message of "Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:32:29 +0100") References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> Message-ID: Harald Arnesen writes: > Harald Arnesen [29.10.2019 11:30]: >> Warner Losh [28.10.2019 20:57]: >> >>> "@  " was the TOPS-20 prompt. >> >> Also the Sintran (Norsk Data) prompt. > > btw, we used to call it "grisehale" ("pig's tail"). Not at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now part of the Norwegian University of Technology and Science). There, it was called "nabla", because of the EXEC 8 operating system on UNIVAC mainframes, which used the FIELDATA character set, and where the "Master Space" character, (visually represented by nabla, which looks like an upside-down capital delta: '∇' if what you're reading this text on supports Unicode) was used as a prefix character indicating an operating system command. It was mapped to ASCII 64 externally, a natural choice, because FIELDATA had no @, ASCII had no nabla -- and Master Space was encoded as decimal 64 in FIELDATA already. The name stuck, and @ kept being called nabla at least until 1990. -tih -- Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay From grog at lemis.com Thu Oct 31 11:19:05 2019 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 12:19:05 +1100 Subject: [COFF] Fieldata characters (was: Comparative promptology) In-Reply-To: References: <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> <7wsgnc4rfd.fsf_-_@junk.nocrew.org> <578c584e-0296-957f-955a-ccab0697560a@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20191031011905.GA68439@eureka.lemis.com> On Wednesday, 30 October 2019 at 9:19:20 +0100, COFF wrote: > Harald Arnesen writes: > >> Harald Arnesen [29.10.2019 11:30]: >>> Warner Losh [28.10.2019 20:57]: >>> >>>> "@  " was the TOPS-20 prompt. >>> >>> Also the Sintran (Norsk Data) prompt. >> >> btw, we used to call it "grisehale" ("pig's tail"). > > Not at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now part of the Norwegian > University of Technology and Science). There, it was called "nabla", > because of the EXEC 8 operating system on UNIVAC mainframes, which used > the FIELDATA character set, and where the "Master Space" character, > (visually represented by nabla, which looks like an upside-down capital > delta: '???' if what you're reading this text on supports Unicode) was > used as a prefix character indicating an operating system command. I worked for and with UNIVAC for most of the 1970s and early 1980s, including on EXEC 8/OS 1100, and the master space (binary 0) was always represented by @, on punched cards, printouts, terminals and the documentation. I've just confirmed with my copy of UP-4040, dating from 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieldata#UNIVAC agrees, though it notes: Sometimes switched with Δ But that's a delta, not a nabla. Fieldata also had a Δ (code 04), and I have never seen this switch. FWIW, this was in Germany, where we called the @ a „Klammeraffe“ (originally a spider monkey). This wasn't limited to UNIVAC. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Thu Oct 31 11:59:00 2019 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:59:00 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] UNIX Backslash History In-Reply-To: References: <201910272031.x9RKVSem124842@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <51f2d838-d097-a93f-b44d-9c670d206d2b@tnetconsulting.net> Message-ID: <1a82938e-09c0-05d8-8066-5f5f270281e2@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> On 10/28/19 2:43 PM, Paul Winalski wrote: rrrrrrrrrrr> Back in the days of stand-alone programs, physical switches on the > console were used to set program options. This helps explain why the option is called a "switch" in some OSs. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4008 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: