From: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!geoff
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: Down with files that begin with a dot
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.345
Posted: Tue Oct 12 18:35:55 1982
Received: Tue Oct 12 21:50:18 1982
References: utcsrgv.598

UTS is almost vanilla v7 UNIX*, put on 370s by Amdahl.
It is *not* an emulator.  The idea of ... is Amdahl's, not ours.
I won't defend BICS; it's a glass keypunch facility.

FLAME Right, let's stamp out these damn dot files!
Berkeley seems to have been a great source of them (.mailrc, .newsrc,
.msgsrc, .cshrc, .thisrc, .thatrc).  Programs like ls and sh
that read directories should explicitly skip only . and ..,
not all files beginning with `.'.  v7 had almost eliminated dot files:
.mail had become /usr/spool/mail/login-name, PWB's .path had vanished,
.profile is the only significant dot file left.  But then 4BSD rushed in
to revive them.  I don't care whether dot files are ordinary visible
files in one's login directory or live in ~/personal, but
the dot convention has got to go.  Make all files visible. EMALF

Geoff Collyer, University of Toronto Computing Services