Table of Contents
Research
First and Second Editions
The manual was initially published as the UNIX Programmer's Manual, by Ken ("ken") Thompson and Dennis ("dmr") Ritchie, and would retain this name throughout the various research editions. The First and Second Edition manuals were written in roff(I) and consisted of 7 sections, identified by Roman numerals:
I. Commands II. System calls III. Subroutines IV. Special Files V. File Formats VI. User-Maintained Programs VII. Miscellaneous
In addition to these sections, the manuals include a title page, introduction, table of contents, and permuted index. At this point, the manual pages still include the OWNER section, detailing who last touched (and by definition owned) the material in question. The pages are identified by the date in the left and the page name in the right of the masthead of each page. There is no text in the middle. Both manuals describe the PDP-11/20 version of UNIX (i.e. the “second version” as described by The UNIX Time-Sharing System.) Additional documentation, at this point, was limited to technical memoranda and other such papers distributed within Bell Laboratories. There is no formalized “look” to the manual this early on, rather, the pages are simply distributed as printouts from the terminal. Documents are likely to contain 7 hole punches as Bell System practices at this time were to punch 7 holes, 3 to match the conventional 3-ring binders used ubiquitously but 4 additional holes to match the 4-ring binders more commonly used throughout the Bell System.
The Second Edition manual adds a preface detailing some overarching changes since the last version as well as acknowledging folks who contributed to the system up to this point. The man(I) command shows up in the Second Edition for reading these manuals online.
Third Edition
The Third Edition manual is still written in roff(I) but adds a new section:
VIII. Maintenance
This manual additionally adds a “How To Get Started” section derived from the login(VII) page present in previous manuals. This manual describes the assembly PDP-11/45 version of UNIX that straddles the space between the PDP-11/20 version described by the prior to manuals and the first C version of UNIX which would be described in the subsequent edition. While the OWNER section has been dropped as of this manual, there is a list in the introduction laying out rough ownership of contributions. The page masthead is altered in that now the page name is displayed in both corners and the date is displayed in the center.
Fourth and Fifth Editions
The Fourth Edition manual sees the transition from roff(I) to nroff(I)-based typesetting. The remaining ownership information is dropped. There is currently not a scanned PDF of the Fourth Edition manual available, as such the above link is instead to the manpage sources. With the change to nroff(I), literals in descriptions are now boldface rather than underlined. The intro(2) page is first added in the Fourth Edition.
The Fourth Edition manual describes the first C version of UNIX, the “third version” described in The UNIX Time-Sharing System, and this version would continue to see growth until transmogrification into the “fourth” version describing the Seventh Edition.
These are likely the first manual editions to see any distribution outside of the Bell System, which like internal distribution, would've been limited to pages typeset on the phototypesetter and then printed on standard paper.
Sixth Edition
The Sixth Edition manual describes the last version of UNIX prior to the Interdata 8/32 portability work and subsequent overarching kernel changes involved. In addition, the section numbering after this edition transitions to Arabic numerals from the Roman numerals which have been in use since the beginning. The following two sections are renamed and slightly adjusted:
V. File Formats and Conventions ... VII. User-Maintained Subroutines
Documents for Use With the UNIX Time-Sharing System
The Sixth Edition also sees the first publication of the companion documentation set variably identified as Documents for UNIX, Volume 2, and other such collections throughout time. Prior to this, the documents were available as technical memoranda in the Bell System document catalogue.
The above photograph depicts the two separate volumes in standard report covers. These specimens originated as documentation distributed with a copy of the Sixth Edition to MIT Lincoln Laboratories for use with a PDP-11/45.
Seventh Edition
The Seventh Edition manual sees many changes, now describing the “fourth version” of UNIX as described in The UNIX Time-Sharing System, that which runs on the PDP-11 and Interdata 8/32 computers. The introduction terminology slightly changes, referring to UNIX as “the UNIX system” rather than just UNIX. As multiple systems were supported now, any machine specificity would be marked at the bottom of the page. The numbering scheme changes to Arabic numerals, and two sections are renamed and adjusted:
6. Games 7. Macro Packages and Language Conventions
Additionally, letters are now used as suffixes for some sub-categories in sections 1, 3. Both sections contain new intro(x) pages explaining this and other conventions. Section 1 now includes the communication (C), graphics (G), and maintenance (M) sub-categories. Section 3 splits out math (M), standard I/O (S), and specialized (X) components into their respective sub-categories.
This is the first research UNIX manual not prepared by Ken and Dennis. Instead, this manual was prepared by Brian (”bwk") Kernighan and Doug McIlroy.
The above photograph depicts the HRW-published volumes from 1983. Original V7 documentation was instead distributed much like that before: as printings from the original typesetting runs at Bell Labs. While the second volume was often distributed as two, Volumes 2A and 2B, the HRW versions instead combine these into one Volume 2.
Eighth Edition
The Eighth Edition of UNIX incorporates much of 4.1BSD and adds a new section, along with changing two others:
7. Data Bases and Language Conventions 8. Maintenance Commands and Procedures 9. Teletype 5620-Related Software
Section 1 no longer has sub-categories, and an additional Fortran (F) suffix is added in section 3.
The system is now described as “the Eighth Edition system in use at the Computing Science Research Center of AT&T Bell Laboratories.” The date is removed from the top of the page, leaving just “Eighth Edition”. The ninth section uses decimal number values to separate different subsections. Some papers are linked above as “Eighth Edition /usr/doc”. The current author is unaware of a currently preserved Volume 2, if one exists. These as well as the Ninth Edition manuals were not distributed commercially like the Seventh and Tenth Edition manuals. This manual was prepared by Doug McIlroy.
The above cover scan was provided by Doug McIlroy.
Ninth Edition
Linked above are current known Ninth Edition artifacts from a Sun porting effort, derived in turn from the Ninth Edition VAX sources. No manpage sources are known to exist currently.
The above cover scan was provided by Doug McIlroy.
Tenth Edition
This would be the last edition of UNIX from the CSRG at Bell Laboratories. These documents would once again see wider distribution, being published in a manner similar to the Seventh Edition manuals. There are once again changes to the sections, it is currently unknown whether these were introduced here or in the Ninth Edition:
4. Devices, Line Disciplines, and File Systems 6. Language Conventions 7. Information Sources A. Other Facilities
Not mentioned in the intro is another section, section 10, concerning circuit design tools. Additionally, section 4 gains an intro(4) page.
This manual was prepared by Andrew Hume and Doug McIlroy.
Pictured above are the published copies of these documents distributed by Saunders College Publishing. Like the Seventh Edition published volumes, the second volume is published as one.