Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!raf From: raf@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: SEA threat to other ARC utility authors Message-ID: <8798@cup.portal.com> Date: 5 Sep 88 18:07:24 GMT References: Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 20 XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.2659 In message <8791@cup.portal.com> Sorceress@cup.portal.com writes: >If memory serves me correctly, the term 'arc' goes back to the early 70's >when Datapoint coined it as an acronym for it's Attached Resource Computer. > >Maybe SEA should look to their own house before going into others! Actually, SEA Inc. (by its own admission) was inspired by the book "Software Tools" by Brian W. Kernighan and P.J. Plauger. The ARC documentation contains an acknowledgement to this effect. I have neither the reference nor the book handy at the moment, but I'd guess the book bears a copyright date in the late 70's. I believe "Software Tools" devotes an entire chapter to the design and development, in C language, of a file librarian program called "archive". This used a distributed directory approach and command line syntax remarkably similar to those used by SEA's ARC. -- Bob Freed raf@cup.portal.com ...sun!portal!cup.portal.com!raf