6 ms·

Research UNIX: Annotated Excerpts from the Programmer’s Manual, 1971-1986 [pdf]

79 points by kick 7y ago

bluenose69 7y ago
Pipe written in a night. The good old days.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  Or nights.
roi 7y ago
This is just the intro. The full document is available at https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/ https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/ .
- kick 7y ago
  Oh shoot, I knew in my search for a link I could share this at (my own digital copy is of less than perfect quality, and is in a format that doesn't allow viewing inside of WWW browsers, so I just picked the one from McIllroy's site) I had missed something. Yeah, absolutely check the fully copy, it's pretty fantastic. Sending a message to hn@yc to try and get the link changed.
  - dang 7y ago
    Ok, we've changed from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf.
- mischief6 7y ago
  i'm glad someone appreciates this. some people at cat-v.org were interested in this and there happened to be a copy at stanford library where a roommate of mine was working at the time. he borrowed it on my behalf and i used the book scanner at noisebridge in san francisco (constructed from wood and two canon cameras and a python script) to image it, and uploaded it to archive.org.
enf 7y ago
My scan of the print edition (kindly mailed to me many years ago by Doug McIlroy), which includes the historical manpages as well as the commentary: https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/ https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/
- kick 7y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing!
ape4 7y ago
Since the beginning you could `echo hello | mail user@host.com`
- kick 7y ago
  Not entirely true, but almost! The DNS hierarchy didn't exist until a (very) late version of UNIX, and if I remember right, most mail used ! instead of @ and .
  - kps 7y ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing
  - emmelaich 7y ago
    In fact, user@host didn't need the internet or uucp. Even without sendmail rewriting, some systems (e.g. MHSnet/ACSNET) used `@` natively IIRC.
    - kick 7y ago
      Thank you for expanding!

79 points by kick 7y ago

bluenose69 7y ago

Pipe written in a night. The good old days.

Koshkin 7y ago
Or nights.

roi 7y ago

This is just the intro. The full document is available at https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/ https://archive.org/details/a_research_unix_reader/ .

kick 7y ago
Oh shoot, I knew in my search for a link I could share this at (my own digital copy is of less than perfect quality, and is in a format that doesn't allow viewing inside of WWW browsers, so I just picked the one from McIllroy's site) I had missed something. Yeah, absolutely check the fully copy, it's pretty fantastic. Sending a message to hn@yc to try and get the link changed.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we've changed from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf.
mischief6 7y ago
i'm glad someone appreciates this. some people at cat-v.org were interested in this and there happened to be a copy at stanford library where a roommate of mine was working at the time. he borrowed it on my behalf and i used the book scanner at noisebridge in san francisco (constructed from wood and two canon cameras and a python script) to image it, and uploaded it to archive.org.

enf 7y ago

My scan of the print edition (kindly mailed to me many years ago by Doug McIlroy), which includes the historical manpages as well as the commentary: https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/ https://archive.org/details/research-unix-reader/

kick 7y ago
Thank you so much for sharing!

ape4 7y ago

Since the beginning you could `echo hello | mail user@host.com`

kick 7y ago
Not entirely true, but almost! The DNS hierarchy didn't exist until a (very) late version of UNIX, and if I remember right, most mail used ! instead of @ and .
- kps 7y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing
- emmelaich 7y ago
  In fact, user@host didn't need the internet or uucp. Even without sendmail rewriting, some systems (e.g. MHSnet/ACSNET) used `@` natively IIRC.
  - kick 7y ago
    Thank you for expanding!