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" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Associate Director > Boston Linux and Unix user group > http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 > PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss > _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
