A snapshot of the shell being built at Bell Labs.

[Warner Losh]

Oh! Can we share this usrnews.txt file with TUHS? Or is it already in their
archive?

Warner

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 7:32 PM Isaac (.ike) Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> It's rare for any presenter, in any technical talk, to even have their
> slides done the day before their presentation.
>
> However, ahead of the NYC*BUG meeting tomorrow night, Steve Bourne
> forwarded something he prepared for us in 1978.
>
> Attached, /usr/news updates June 1976 through July 1978.  A snapshot of
> the shell being built at Bell Labs.  It shows the actual design decisions
> as they were happening (spoiler alert):
>
> - $pid -> $$, $r -> $?, $n -> $#, $pcs -> $! (variable names compressing
> from words to symbols)
> - read introduced as a builtin (replacing set -r name)
> - export introduced, variables not transmitted to environment by default
> (this shocked me!)
> - PATH replacing the old lowercase $p
> - IFS word splitting on read
> - The line: "Those who read certain children's magazines will readily
> recognize these."
>
>
> Also a reminder, worth a look before tomorrow's fireside chat, where we
> can discuss more with SRB:
>
> BSTJ 57: 6. July-August 1978: UNIX Time-Sharing System: The UNIX Shell.
> (Bourne, S.R.)
> https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1971
>
> Best,
> .ike
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.nycbug.org:8443/pipermail/talk/attachments/20260513/36be07e0/attachment.htm>