Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!jade!eris!mwm
From: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: history question-- Bourne (and C) SHELL COMMENTS
Message-ID: <1066@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 6-Aug-86 19:25:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.1066
Posted: Wed Aug  6 19:25:38 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Aug-86 03:46:47 EDT
References: <1751@ittatc.ATC.ITT.UUCP> <2759@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.UUCP ()
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 29
Xref: watmath net.unix:8829 net.unix-wizards:19093


To add some more background to Chris's comments.

The v7 shell did indeed swallow ':' (with parsed argumernts) as a
comment, and did not take '#' as a comment (neither did 2.8BSD
systems). The v6 shell used ':' as a label for branches, so you could
write things like:

	: loop
	who
	sleep 3600
	goto loop

for iterated displays, etc. I wouldn't be suprised if this use of ':'
had something to do with ':''s use in the v7 shell.

I've heard a rumor that berkeley didn't introduce '#' as a shell
comment character, but picked it up from the Unix 2.0 (PWD 2.0) or
Unix 3.0 shells. On the other hand, it was definitely used on v6 & v7
systems running csh by csh to decide if your script was going to be
run by csh or sh.

Similarly, hearsay has it that the explanation for the '#!command' was
that it was an extension of what the pascal interpreter was doing at
the time.

Naturally, corrections by people with hard facts are welcome.

	<mike