Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!shelby!rutgers!cmcl2!polyof!john
From: john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Old stuff
Summary: 1 (one) bell system, it worked [sic]
Message-ID: <463@polyof.UUCP>
Date: 10 May 89 22:22:30 GMT
References: <5583@lynx.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Polytechnic University, Farmingdale NY
Lines: 26

In article <5583@lynx.UUCP>, m5@lynx.uucp (Mike McNally) writes:
> 1)  I remember that on my old 8086-based (yes, 8086; it was an Intel
>     multibus board with a kludge piggyback thing that added some
>     protection or something) Xenix system, a condition would arise
>     in the normal course of doing stuff that would produce the
>     message "One Bell system -- it works".  I don't think that 
>     anyone at Microsoft would have done this, so I figure it came
>     from Version 7 somewhere.  
> Mike McNally                                    Lynx Real-Time Systems


The message was produced by the "1" command.  The idea being (I would
guess), that users of "ed" would forget to type "ed file", and, by
force of habit, type "1<RETURN>".  Rather than have the system
print "1: not found", or some such, some wiseguy at Bell decided
to make a "1" command.  This was standard issue with Unix V7 (for
PDP-11's, anyway).

The "1" command would also randomly call itself 10 more times. (It used
the "random" command to determine when.)  I believe there was also
a random condition where the "fortune" command would be executed, but,
this could have been a local hack.

John Buck
john@polyof.poly.edu [128.238.10.100]
john@polygraf.bitnet