Tag Archives: Unix

Vivek Haldar on How Unix Won

Posted on 2020-05-06 by jcs

Vivek Haldar has an interesting essay on How Unix Won and it why it may now be entering its end phase. From a technical standpoint, the main reason Unix fared so well is that it was written by programmers for … Continue reading →

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Surprising Unix Programs

Posted on 2020-03-18 by jcs

Doug McIlroy has another interesting post on TUHS. This time it’s about Unix programs that he found surprising. Many of the programs have been replaced by updated tools and are no longer used by most people but they all offer … Continue reading →

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Sort and Uniq

Posted on 2020-03-15 by jcs

I’ve been using Unix for 3 decades but I just learned something new about two of the basic Unix tools sort and uniq. If you’re not familiar with Unix command line tools, sort does just what it sounds like. You … Continue reading →

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A Talk With Brian Kernighan

Posted on 2019-10-18 by jcs

Back in March, John Mashey interviewed Brian Kernighan at Princeton about his career and technical work. It’s a wonderful video that covers his career from his undergraduage years to his current position as a professor at Princeton. We’ve heard some … Continue reading →

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Ken Thompson’s Password

Posted on 2019-10-10 by jcs

Many years ago, (the old) SCO released the source for some “ancient” versions of Unix. They did that by releasing a tape dump of the file system. Included in the image was a copy of the password file. The file … Continue reading →

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Remembering Unix at 50

Posted on 2019-09-02 by jcs

As hard as it seems to believe, Unix is going to be 50 this year. Once Unix escaped from the Labs and became generally known and available, there was a lot of skepticism that it would have amount to anything. … Continue reading →

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Seven Bash Tips

Posted on 2019-08-28 by jcs

Carrying on with yesterday’s theme of Bash hackery, I present to you Ian Miell’s Seven God-Like Bash History Shortcuts You Will Actually Use. If you’re anything like me, you read one of these articles and think, “Wow! That’s really neat. … Continue reading →

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Emacs For a Single Line of Text

Posted on 2019-08-27 by jcs

What if you could use Emacs to edit the command line? Wouldn’t that be great? Well, of course, you can. Not only can but almost certainly do. I’m not talking about invoking Emacs from Bash with Ctrl+x Ctrl+e; I’m talking … Continue reading →

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Haldar Reads Reflections on Trusting Trust

Posted on 2019-06-25 by jcs

I’ve written at least twice about Ken Thompson’s Turing Award Lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust and each time I told you to be sure to read it. It describes one of the—if not the—greatest hacks of all time. In the … Continue reading →

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Brian Kernighan & Ken Thompson Chat

Posted on 2019-05-07 by jcs

Last Saturday at the Vintage Computer Festival East, Brian Kernighan and Ken Thompson sat down and chatted about some Unix history and other interesting events in Thompson’s life. The chat was billed as “Kernighan interviewing Thompson” but it was really … Continue reading →

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