Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!snorkelwacker!spdcc!esegue!johnl
From: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Dr David G Korn to speak at SVNet
Message-ID: <1990Mar7.052552.11154@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Date: 7 Mar 90 05:25:52 GMT
References: <1753@ralmar.UUCP> <14020085@hpisod2.HP.COM> <2289@plx.UUCP>
Reply-To: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Organization: Segue Software, Cambridge MA
Lines: 20

In article <2289@plx.UUCP> evan@plx.UUCP (Evan Bigall) writes:
>sh contained some of the most notoriously bad sources in all of unix. 
>This has lots to do with it being very old, devloped in the infancy of 
>c and unix.

Not so, the fifth edition had an earlier shell written by John Mashey.
Lots of small hacks were made to it, for instance I added a set of 52
variables $a-$z and $A-$Z.  When Steve Bourne wrote his shell, he evidently
wanted to write it in Algol 68, but in the absence of a working Algol 68
compiler he used #define to make C look surprisingly like Algol 68, coming
up with a strange dialect that the rest of the world found impenetrable.
Somewhat later, around early System III, somebody de-Algolized the sources
and that's basically the current Bourne shell.

I haven't looked at the Korn shell, but anyone who could figure out the Bourne
shell well enough to add all that swell stuff to it has my respect.
-- 
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650
johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus|spdcc}!esegue!johnl
"Now, we are all jelly doughnuts."