Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!husc6!encore!pinocchio.encore.com
From: jdarcy@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff "spackle-man" d'Arcy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Dr David G Korn to speak at SVNet
Message-ID: <11314@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 90 04:04:55 GMT
References: <2289@plx.UUCP>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Lines: 19

decot@hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot):
> Not to discourage people from attending, necessarily, but has anyone
> ever tried to read the ksh sources?

evan@plx.UUCP (Evan Bigall):
> ksh was not (I believe) written from scratch, it was based on sh. 
> 
> 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.

Perhaps Dave was misled by the notice in most of the ksh sources that says
"rewritten by David Korn".  Note that the word used is not "enhanced" or
"modified" but "rewritten".  This implies either that Dr. Korn is behind
the not-quite-exemplary coding of ksh or that he is taking an undue amount
of credit for its creation.

Jeff d'Arcy     OS/Network Software Engineer     jdarcy@encore.com
    DISCLAIMER: I don't represent Encore any more than you do