Summary of "That Crazy Caret" explanations

[mlip at NADC.ARPA]

[In tenebris,i!] (for Latin freaks)


A hearty thanks to all who explained the problem of the "That Crazy Caret".
The explanation was that the caret ('^') is a synonym for the 
vertical bar or pipe symbol ('|').  Apparently, this equivalence 
is preserved for upward compatibility.  Previous version of UNIX
treated the caret as the piping symbol.  This was probably due to
the unavailability of the vertical bar on many older keyboards.
However, I could not find any reference to the caret as an alternate 
symbol for piping in the 4.1 BSD documentation.


Thanks
mlip at nadc