From tuhs at tuhs.org Tue Sep 2 22:49:02 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Arnold Robbins via TUHS) Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2025 06:49:02 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year Message-ID: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Hi All. My brother sent me the link to this article: https://thenewstack.io/unix-co-creator-brian-kernighan-on-rust-distros-and-nixos/ IMHO you should skip over the article and move to the video at the end of it. I always enjoy listening to him. Enjoy, Arnold From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 09:39:03 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Will Senn via TUHS) Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2025 18:39:03 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Python Documentary Message-ID: <042da406-62ee-46f3-8b66-98976a87a66a@gmail.com> All, I know my language pals are all over this, but in case you hadn't been paying attention, python's riding ascendant these days and I would argue, unix played a big role in the birthing of this language. It's fingerprints are all over it, so to speak. A documentary came out the other day and it's very worth watching - the overlap with unix's latter days is evident, even though it's very much about the language. Here's the link, enjoy (or grumble, the choice is yours): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfH4QL4VqJ0 Will -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 11:42:05 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Larry McVoy via TUHS) Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2025 18:42:05 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year In-Reply-To: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <20250903014205.GQ21837@mcvoy.com> Brian at 83 is better than me at 50 (I'm 63 and even worse). What an amazing guy. On Tue, Sep 02, 2025 at 06:49:02AM -0600, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote: > Hi All. > > My brother sent me the link to this article: > https://thenewstack.io/unix-co-creator-brian-kernighan-on-rust-distros-and-nixos/ > > IMHO you should skip over the article and move to the video at the end of > it. I always enjoy listening to him. > > Enjoy, > > Arnold -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 17:39:52 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 10:39:52 +0300 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only hallucinates many wrong ones. Many thanks, Diomidis - https://www.spinellis.gr From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 17:56:55 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Jonathan Gray via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 17:56:55 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote: > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday, > bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking > pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s > > Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only hallucinates > many wrong ones. "The spell script originated with Steve Johnson." >From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir. An example script is on page 150. From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 20:03:33 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Nikos Vasilakis via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 06:03:33 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: El mié, 3 sept 2025 a la(s) 3:57 a.m., Jonathan Gray via TUHS (tuhs at tuhs.org) escribió: > > On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote: > > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday, > > bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking > > pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s > > > > Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only hallucinates > > many wrong ones. > > "The spell script originated with Steve Johnson." > From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir. > An example script is on page 150. Also: "Steve Johnson wrote the first version of the spell in an afternoon in 1975." from an older reference, Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls: A spelling Checker" (CACM, May 1st, 1985), which offers additional analysis of this program (and is openly accessible): https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532.315102 N. From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 21:44:48 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Jonathan Gray via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 21:44:48 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 06:03:33AM -0400, Nikos Vasilakis via TUHS wrote: > El mié, 3 sept 2025 a la(s) 3:57 a.m., Jonathan Gray via TUHS > (tuhs at tuhs.org) escribió: > > > > On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 10:39:52AM +0300, Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote: > > > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared yesterday, > > > bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous spell checking > > > pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm > > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s > > > > > > Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only hallucinates > > > many wrong ones. > > > > "The spell script originated with Steve Johnson." > > From page 149 of Brian's book, UNIX: A History and a Memoir. > > An example script is on page 150. > > Also: "Steve Johnson wrote the first version of the spell in an > afternoon in 1975." from an older reference, Jon Bentley's > "Programming Pearls: A spelling Checker" (CACM, May 1st, 1985), which > offers additional analysis of this program (and is openly accessible): > https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532.315102 > > N. The spell manual page from fifth edition is dated 2/26/74. The script was not distributed with fifth or six edition as far as I can tell. Seventh edition has Doug's C version. From tuhs at tuhs.org Wed Sep 3 22:53:16 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Dan Cross via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 08:53:16 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 3:47 AM Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS wrote: > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared > yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous > spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s > > Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only > hallucinates many wrong ones. As others have pointed out, it was Steve Johnson. I wanted to mention that he did say Steve Johnson in the video as well, though I can see how one might (mis)hear differently; I think that's just an artifact of the audio. - Dan C. From tuhs at tuhs.org Thu Sep 4 00:38:34 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Heinz Lycklama via TUHS) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 07:38:34 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <1aff910d-4943-4ba0-b011-fd0707b48abc@osta.com> Grok provides a meaningful answer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian Kernighan is credited with demonstrating the famous spell checking pipeline using Unix commands like cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm (or similar variations). In a classic 1970s Bell Labs video titled "The UNIX Operating System," he showcased pipelines for spell checking as an early example of Unix's power. The video uses a pipeline like makewords sentence | lowercase | sort | unique | mismatch to extract words, lowercase them, sort, remove duplicates, and compare against a dictionary—concepts that directly inspired modern equivalents with tr for translation, uniq for deduplication, and comm for comparison. This approach highlights Unix's philosophy of combining simple tools for complex tasks, and while the exact commands evolved, the core idea stems from Kernighan's presentation. The original spell command from 1975, written by Stephen C. Johnson with improvements by Douglas McIlroy, used a similar internal logic but not this exact pipeline. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Heinz On 9/3/2025 5:53 AM, Dan Cross via TUHS wrote: > On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 3:47 AM Diomidis Spinellis via TUHS > wrote: >> In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared >> yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous >> spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm >> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s >> >> Anybody knows the correct name of that person? ChatGPT only >> hallucinates many wrong ones. > As others have pointed out, it was Steve Johnson. I wanted to mention > that he did say Steve Johnson in the video as well, though I can see > how one might (mis)hear differently; I think that's just an artifact > of the audio. > > - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tuhs at tuhs.org Thu Sep 4 02:03:57 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Thalia Archibald via TUHS) Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2025 16:03:57 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: On Sep 3, 2025, at 01:39, Diomidis Spinellis wrote: > > In Brian Kernighan's amazing VCF talk that Arnold Robbins shared > yesterday, bwk mentions that Steve N[uancen?] came up with the famous > spell checking pipeline: cat | tr | sort | uniq | comm > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEb_YL1K1Qg&t=1396s In “The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive” (1982), Brian Kernighan describes a similar pipeline: makewords sentence | lowercase | sort | unique | mismatch -� where `sentence` is a file and the last character typed was not shown. Spell-checking evidently teaches pipelines well, as he’s been explaining similar formulations for a long time. Thalia From tuhs at tuhs.org Thu Sep 4 02:06:35 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Thalia Archibald via TUHS) Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2025 16:06:35 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Who came up with the spell check pipeline? In-Reply-To: References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <7C4F4A43-E736-436C-BAD0-D4D40BAA0BB7@archibald.dev> On Sep 3, 2025, at 10:03, Thalia Archibald wrote: > In “The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive” (1982), Brian Kernighan > describes a similar pipeline And that film can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 Thalia From tuhs at tuhs.org Thu Sep 4 12:31:05 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey via TUHS) Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 12:31:05 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] dmr's C Compiler: a more detailed look? Message-ID: Hi all, does anybody know of a deeper dive into dmr's PDP-11 C compiler other than "A Tour through the UNIX C Compiler" from the Unix Programmer’s Manual Vol 2B? I'm specifically interested in the PDP-11 code generation from the AST trees: given the PDP-11 has a heap of addressing modes, there must be interesting ways of using them in a compiler to avoid registers. Anyway, if there is something closer to a function-level (and data structure level) exposition, I'd be very keen to find it! Many thanks in advance, Warren From tuhs at tuhs.org Fri Sep 5 07:53:18 2025 From: tuhs at tuhs.org (=?utf-8?q?Cameron_M=C3=AD=C4=8Be=C3=A1l_Tyre_via_TUHS?=) Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:53:18 +0000 Subject: [TUHS] Brian Kernighan's talk on the history of Unix at VCF East this year In-Reply-To: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> References: <202509021249.582Cn22h066009@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <5W51nWcqJ9-uuyRHnqIkrl6VjMHzTlplOncCDpfkCggel1oBN77i-2k10befFnxq4Yhl55Zvd6RZ8FzDGHHkDdQnNyu2yepopKfUFIM56KU=@protonmail.ch> Hello Arnold, Thank you for sharing that link. I actually sneaked a peek at some of the article but realized, as you suggested, that I should skip straight to the video. One of the most enjoyable 100 minutes. Mr. Kernighan just has a way of communicating that I my brain latches onto. I found it interesting that the calm and collected presentation of information that lured me into "The C Programming Language", in college 38 years ago, endured in this verbal presentation. I loved his sense of humor also. How lucky are the students at Princeton who get an opportunity to go to one of his lectures, regardless of the subject! Best regards, Cameron