| Next revision | Previous revisionNext revisionBoth sides next revision |
| anecdotes:pipes [2015/12/29 19:50] – created admin | anecdotes:pipes [2015/12/29 20:03] – admin |
|---|
| ====== The Day Ken Installed Pipes ====== | ====== The Day Ken Installed Pipes ====== |
| |
| <code>Dick Haight, was present the day that | It was Doug McIlroy who convinced Ken Thompson to add pipes to Unix: |
| pipes were introduced into Unix. | "Over a period from 1970 til ’72, I’d from time to time, say "How about making something like this?", and I would put up another proposal, another proposal, another proposal. Then one day I came up with a syntax for the shell that went along with the piping and Ken said, "I’m gonna do it." He was tired of hearing all this stuff... That was absolutely a fabulous day, the next day. He said, "I’m gonna do it." He didn’t do exactly what I had proposed for the pipe system call. He invented a slightly better one that finally got changed once more to what we have today. He did use my clumsy syntax... He put this notation into the shell [Here McIlroy points to the board, where he had written f >g> c], all in one night. The next morning we had this… people came in, people came in… Oh, and he also changed a lot of… most of the programs up until that time couldn’t take standard input, because, there wasn’t the real need. They all had file arguments. grep had a file argument, cat had a file argument. Thompson saw that that wasn’t going to fit into this scheme of things, and he went in and changed all those programs in the same night. I don’t know how. And the next morning we had this orgy of "one liners." Everybody had another one liner. Look at this, look at that." (Doug McIlroy, [[http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/OralHistory/transcripts/mcilroy.htm|Oral History of Unix]]) |
| |
| "I happened to have been visiting the research crew the | |
| day they implemented pipes. It was clear to everyone | Dick Haight was present the day that pipes were introduced into Unix: |
| practically minutes after the system came up with pipes | "I happened to have been visiting the research crew theday they implemented pipes. It was clear to everyone practically minutes after the system came up with pipes working that it was a wonderful thing. Nobody would ever go back and give that up if they could help it." (Jay and Ronda Hauben, //Netizens: An Anthology//, [[http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x09|Chapter 9 - On the Early History and Impact of UNIX: Tools to Build the Tools for a New Millennium]]) |
| working that it was a wonderful thing. Nobody would ever go | |
| back and give that up if they could help it." | |
| </code> | |
| |
