New answers tagged history
0
votes
Why not use "which"? What to use then?
(Since this question is tagged with "portability", various interpretations of the question are excluded, including "interactive use" and "I only care about the system I'm ...
5
votes
Accepted
Which software emits dates in this format between dollar signs when exporting?
These are RCS keywords, also used by CVS and other version control software:
$ echo '$Id$' >> foo
$ ci foo
foo,v <-- foo
enter description, terminated with single '.' or end of file:
NOTE: ...
25
votes
Why does `dd` use `=` in its parameters?
POSIX mentions the following in its rationale section for dd:
Certainly, many of the operands could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would have resulted in the classic ...
2
votes
Why is `-W` reserved for vendor extensions?
v would normally be user for version or verbose, you cannot overload the switch. Bear in mind, this would be from a time when AT&T/BSD were the only versions out there and before ...
1
vote
Why was /dev/null called that?
'null' means 'nothing', 'without value', and so on.
'empty' implies a container. For emptiness to exist we need a container.
In computer science in which zero is a value, we need a term for 'nothing'. ...
2
votes
Did Unix have a package manager?
Early unix did not have a package manager, but some of the commercial distributions added package managers. All of them were proprietary and non-standard.
For example, SunOS (aka Solaris), HPUX, and ...
5
votes
Accepted
Did Unix have a package manager?
No.
The package manager requires a repository to be useful. Some storage space where packages wait to be installed.
A repository requires network. Or some other kind of external storage.
The earliest &...
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