Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Message-ID: <1053@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 20 Feb 89 19:29:31 GMT
References: <1090@taux01.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 35


 >Speaking of strange error messages, does anybody remember the message
 >printed by 'rm' on ancient unix (V6) when trying to remove a file whose
 >name begins with '.' :
 >
 >	elements of B will give rise to dom
 >
 >B above was actually ^N B ^O which according to /usr/pub/greek should
 >print as beta on tty37 terminals.  This message was intended to prevent
 >the user from removing '.' and '..';  however I could never find out
 >what it meant.  Any old unix hands out there?

As I remember the story as told to me by Dennis Ritchie:

	Somebody was working on some paper; they'd edit it inside "ed",
	write it out, do a "!eqn xxx | nroff ..." to proofread it (or
	parts of it), interrupt the printout when they saw something
	that needed correction, and go back to editing....

	At one point, the interrupt caused text saying

		Values of (beta) will give rise to dom

	to appear (the interrupt caused some output characters from
	"nroff" to be discarded).  "ed" then printed its "!", indicating
	that the "!" command had returned.  The net result was:

		Values of (beta) will give rise to dom!

	which some people thought looked sufficiently ominous that it
	deserved to become an error message; hence it was added to "rm".

(Yes, it was either "Values" or "values"; I don't remember which of
those it was in the "rm" message, though, and I didn't ask Dennis which
it was in the original story....)