System N history correction

[Geoff Collyer]

Michael Baldwin writes:

	Here are the things that are in System V Release 2:

	> 	at(1): run commands at a later time, due to broken chown(2)
	Has an at(1) which has multiple at queues (which run at different
	priorities), removal and listing of your at jobs, and a batch command
	(which is just at -qb).  BTW, chown(2) works just fine.
I'm glad to hear that chown has been fixed; allowing ordinary users to
chown files just so RJE didn't have to be setuid-root was silly.
	> 	(tty(4): replaced by USG's arguably better but utterly
	>	incompatible one)
	So?  Termio(7) is incompatible but much saner.
Just the facts, ma'am.

	Here are the missing, but not missed, things:

	> 	look(1): binary search on a sorted file
	It's nice for /usr/dict/words, what else?
I use it for searching phone books.
look is very handy for checking the spelling of a word, *before* you use it
rather than after spell complains about it.
	> 	enroll(1), xsend, xget - secret mail
	Secret mail?  Give me a break.
Just the facts.
	> 	pkon(2), pkoff: packet protocol
	Is this necessary at the kernel level?
Of course it isn't necessary. JTFM.
	> 	mpx(2): file multiplexor, replaced only in V8 by stream I/O
	You miss mpx(2)?  You're the only one I've met who does.
	There are FIFO's, message queues, semaphores and shared memory
	if you want IPC.
Nothing has ever fully replaced mpx(2).  It was buggy as distributed and
the manual page was a bit hard to understand, but mpx is a very general
mechanism.  Maybe you don't meet the right people.

The point of my original article was not to attack System N for omitting
specific bits of software, but to correct a mistaken belief about
System N held by a lot of people: the belief that System N are derived
from v7.  (Well, maybe I got in a bit of Uglix-bashing.)
-- 
Eighth Edition: UNIX for the eighties.