
A Unix Shell poster from 1983 - skellertor
https://twitter.com/0xUID/status/1051208357850345472?s=20
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bitofhope
>@ kill line

I think I saw this in _The Unix Programming Environment_ by Kernighan and
Pike. @ doesn't seem to do anything using various shells on any systems I can
quickly think of trying:

* /bin/sh (dash) on Linux on AMD64

* zsh on Linux on AMD64, NetBSD/amd64 (Xen domU), NetBSD/sparc64, Solaris 10 on Sparc64

* bash on Linux on AMD64

* /bin/sh on NetBSD/amd64 (Xen domU), NetBSD/sparc64, Solaris 10 on Sparc64, Tru64 V5.1 2650 on Alpha

* pdksh on OpenBSD on AMD64

None of those seemed to treat @ as anything special so I decided to go older,
but…

* /bin/csh and /bin/sh on 4.3BSD on simh-vax780

…equally bust. Maybe I'm remembering the syntax wrong? I don't have the book
with me now. Otherwise, wonder when this feature was removed? Probably after
video terminals with erasable characters became commonplace.

~~~
kbob
@ was actually the try driver's default kill character through 7th Edition or
thereabouts. It was changed to ^U when CRT terminals became common, since
those could actually erase the input, and there was no need to leave a visible
marker showing killed text.

I think the erasing behavior came from 2BSD. That's where I saw it first in
Unix.

~~~
bitofhope
Yep, I assume the change was due to change from paper teletypes to CRT
terminals. 2BSD is interesting, because that would make this likely a
V7/SysIII/SysV poster since in 1983 they were already releasing 4.2BSD. The
Unix Programming Environment was released in 1984 so that part might have
confused BSD users already back when it was released! I wouldn't be surprised
if AT&T continued with @ and # all the way to SVR4.

------
usrme
Here is a larger version that isn't a photo:
[https://i.imgur.com/iicvkdp.png](https://i.imgur.com/iicvkdp.png)

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pmoriarty
I was expecting this one instead:

[https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg)

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TeMPOraL
So the "improper" use of cat, for printing files on screen, dates back to at
least 1983. I consider it legitimized.

~~~
dijit
Cat is fine for reading a file. It’s when you ‘cat <file> | grep <word>‘ that
it becomes improper use.

~~~
JdeBP
TeMPOraL got the adjective wrong. The correct adjective is "useless".

* [http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html](http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html)

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zachrose
I would buy a reproduction in a heartbeat.

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nixpulvis
Funny seeing this pop up as I've spent this whole weekend working on a Rust
POSIX shell:
[https://github.com/nixpulvis/oursh](https://github.com/nixpulvis/oursh).

`&` is my next thing to implement.

------
JdeBP
The challenge here is to identify the 1983 Unix, or whether it is indeed one
single Unix.

It has the old line discipline defaults for the eof, kill, and interrupt
special characters. But it also has a job control shell and the susp special
character. It does not mention either Mail or mailx. login is apparently the
shell built in that overlays the current shell, and there are both vi and ex
for the visual and line mode editors. But there's a help command, too.

~~~
bitofhope
So, in 1983 I think the possible variants are 4.2BSD, SunOS 1.0, Xenix 3.0,
SVR1.

Someone in a sibling thread mentioned the kill line characters were already
replaced around 2BSD. SVR1 had vi and ex, too. `lpr` is BSDian, I think, but
maybe System V included that too as an alternative.

It's hard to tell, really. At the time SVR1 was out and included fairly many
bits of BSD in it, as did Xenix. The only thing I can really say is that SunOS
is unlikely, since it was designed for workstations with video monitors from
day 1 and the kill characters seem anachronistic since erasing was a standard
feature in terminals already and default behavior in current BSD.

------
fredsted
Interesting that `pr` and `troff` still exists on OS X Mojave!

~~~
OskarS
`pr` is part of the POSIX standard, so of course it still hangs around! Can't
remove a thing like that! I don't think `troff` is part of POSIX, but since it
used to be (still is?) the standard tool for typesetting man pages, it's not
so surprising it's still around.

~~~
pjc50
Man pages are typeset with nroff to the console and troff to the printer. Yes,
you can print manpages, and they turn out quite nice: try "man -t bash >
bash.ps" to produce a postscript file which can be printed or converted to PDF
etc.

~~~
xelxebar
Okay. You kind of blew my mind. My `man` command doesn't seem to have the `-t`
switch, but I can do this

    
    
        MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf man
    

and, bam! I'm reading a pdf man page for `man`. On my system `man` is
symlinked to `mandoc` and I've apparently got the latest version from here:

[http://mandoc.bsd.lv/](http://mandoc.bsd.lv/)

Better yet, the `-T` switch seems to take a decent selection of options, even
markdown and html!

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ToFab123
In the comments on Twitter someone said "This inspired Debian". What's that
story about?

~~~
Laforet
Probably Debian's logo

~~~
dima55
The Debian logo is based on the idea of magic smoke, not this.

------
crististm
Was Fortran called F77 back then?

~~~
anticensor
F77 is the 1977 revision of Fortran standard, which brought major new
features.

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justinpw
Where is "yes"?

