Xah Lee's Unixism

[jmfbahciv at aol.com]

In article <87d613mckn.fsf at k9.prep.synonet.com>,
   Paul Repacholi <prep at prep.synonet.com> wrote:
>jmfbahciv at aol.com writes:
>
>> In article <ApudnfQdCY-dfavcRVn-pQ at speakeasy.net>,
>>    rpw3 at rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
>>><jmfbahciv at aol.com> wrote:
>>>+---------------
>>>| rpw3 at rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
>>>| >| Consider the "PIP" command.
>>>| >+---------------
>>>| >
>>>| >Indeed. And COPY & DEL & DIR, etc.
>>>| 
>>>| Well, not quite :-).  COPY and DELETE called PIP via a CCL
>>>| command.  DIRECT became its own program.  To do a directory
>>>| using PIP required a switch and wasn't a monitor level command.
>>>+---------------
>
>>>Yes, I knew that. What I was trying to convey is that the *names*
>>>of those DOS commands had also been copied from the DEC lineages.
>>>That is, COPY/DEL/DIR rather than cp/rm/ls.
>
>They are not DOS commands, thay are CPM commands that just happened
>to report for duty in redmondia.
>
>> IIRC, those verbs didn't show up until after 4S72 of TOPS-10 (it
>> wasn't TOPS-10 back then either).  I would also suspect that the PIP
>> didn't originate at DEC either.  A lot of those guys did work at MIT
>> before they coalasced into a startup company.
>
>All of them where in the 4.x monitir I used. many of the 427 source file
>are on Tim's site, so you can have a look in COMTAB and see.

huh..The why did I have to do TTY:_DT0:/L or LPT:_DT0:/L
to get directories?  And to print a file on the line printer
required the PIP command LPT:_DSK:FOO.FOR

Sigh!  Substitute those underscores with backarrows.

The point is still that these commands were "created" not
by one OS but by the conglomerate of future bit gods who
were yakking at each other and moving from one OS project
to another OS' project.  Back then there were only a handful
of people who were doing this work.  

Are we suffering from the demise of the thingies we used to
call DECUS when the workers got together instead of the PHBs
and marketeers?

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.