UNIX Trivia Question

[jrh at hou5e.UUCP]

A trivia question from way back, for you UNIX historians (I don't
know the answer, but will summerise responses to the net later). I
seem to recall in UNIX version 5 (or maybe 6), the rmdir command
was written in assembler (yes, Virginia, UNIX used to have some things
not written in C). If you (foolishly) issued the command
		rmdir . 
it replied with, I think, "Unexpected values of b will give rise to dom".

Can anyone out there confirm (or deny) this? If true, can anyone
explain it?

			Thanks in advance,

			John Hutchinson
			{houx? | ariel}!hou5e!jrh
			AT&T-ISL, Holmdel.