Excerpts from Dagobert Michelsen's message of Tue Aug 25 06:35:45 -0400 2009:
> This is very interesting. /bin/sh seems to be the only shell > exhibiting this behaviour, /usr/xpg4/bin/sh (the standard compliant > shell) does not. Agreed. I've yet to find anything else that honours it. > So, either the authors are not well informed, or Solaris 10 is not a > modern unix ;-) No, I think they're correct. There isn't anything using/relying on the feature on a modern system...at least I _hope_ not. > After reading a bit more I learned that this was already in the > precursor of the Bourne > Shell, the "Thompson Shell" provided with Unix v4: > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_shell> > This must have been sometime after 1971, the year I was born 8-) I found that article too, which was very interesting. After posing the same question to the 'grey beards' on campus here, the consensus was that it's either a backward compatibility thing or just a vestigial organ (more effort to remove than to leave)...maybe both. Another interesting tidbit was turned up in the discussion: <quoting Henry Spencer> Correct. Back in the dawn of Unix time, there was some use of terminals which didn't have "|" -- or at least couldn't print it, although some had ways to trick the keyboard into sending it -- but did have "^", printed as an upward-pointing arrow. Hence the availability of "^" as a synonym. </quoting Henry Spencer> The (computer) history geek in me loves this kind of stuff. -Ben -- Ben Walton Systems Programmer - CHASS University of Toronto C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302 GPG Key Id: 8E89F6D2; Key Server: pgp.mit.edu Contact me to arrange for a CAcert assurance meeting.
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