UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]

[Hewitt Tech]

You had "C"? All we had was assembler! You had assembler? All we had was
ones and zeros! You had ones and zeros? ...

-Alex

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Feldman" <gaf at blu.org>
To: <discuss at gnhlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]


> I think you are correct. Create(2) is a system call. Linkage editors those
> days were rather primitive. I think the name limit was either 7 or 8, but
> external names in C were many times autoprefixed with __, such that creat
> became __creat.
> The C language had a limit of 8 characters for a variable name (K&R 2.1).
> (Actually a name could be longer, but only the first 8 were significant).
> I think the only other programmer on this list who might have been writing
> C back then is my granduncle, Alex Hewitt ;-)
>
> On 20 Aug 2002 at 16:43, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
> >   I believe it was Ken Thompson, and I believe the remark was intended
to be
> > humorous.  Step back and ask: Why would he spell "create" as "creat" in
the
> > first place?  If you are going to type five characters, you might as
well
> > type six.  The reason it was spelled "creat" in the first place was the
> > linked only supported five characters.  That has caused much
> > head-scratching, question-asking, and recompiling-due-to-typos; hence
the
> > remark about the spelling.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> Associate Director
> Boston Linux and Unix user group
> http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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>
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