On: Newly discovered earliest draft of a Unix manual (...

[gamache]

There must be some OCR errors in there -- the system call "create" was spelled with an "e"!

[krylon → gamache]

Well, there's this quote by Ken Thompson, who was asked if he'd do anything different if were to start over on Unix: "I would spell creat with an e".

With that in mind, it's kind of funny to see that "correction" made by some OCR software.

[greenyoda → gamache]

It's not an OCR error - the error appears in the original. If you look at Page 8 of the scanned PDF[1], it says:

  filep = create(name, mode)

[1] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc...

[mpweiher → gamache]

Sure about that?

   CREAT(2)                    BSD System Calls Manual                   CREAT(2)

   NAME
        creat -- create a new file

   LIBRARY
        Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

   SYNOPSIS
        #include <fcntl.h>

        int
        creat(const char *path, mode_t mode);

   DESCRIPTION
        This interface is made obsolete by: open(2).

        The creat() function is the same as:

              open(path, O_CREAT | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY, mode);

   SEE ALSO
        open(2)

   HISTORY
        The creat() function appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

   BSD                              June 2, 1993                              BSD

[lambda → mpweiher]

I think he's saying that in this document, "creat" is sometimes spelled with an "e", indicating that the OCR process overcorrected.

  3.5.2 Create
  
  To create a new file, the following call is used.
  
       filep = create(name, mode)

[rst → mpweiher]

You're missing the joke -- the recovered "Unix 0" manual seems to spell it 'create', even though it was 'creat' in subsequent versions.

[ksherlock → mpweiher]

    3.5.2 Create

    To create a new file, the following call is used.

         filep = create(name, mode)

But it's listed correctly as a system call.

    A1.6 creat

    To create or recreate a file,

          sys creat
          name
          mode