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From: Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: shells The Design of Design
Date: Wed, 8 May 2024 07:36:32 -0000 (UTC)
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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
> According to Thomas Koenig  <tkoenig@netcologne.de>:
>>> I was not around, but my impression is that by time of creation of UNIX
>>> it was a common understanding. For example, DEC supplied RSX-11 with
>>> DCL at about the same time [as UNIX got Thompson shell) and I never
>>> heard that anybody considered it novel.
>>
>>The Thompson shell was still restricted to GOTO (as was the RSX-11
>>shell).
>
> You're probably thinking of the Mashey shell.

Disclaimer: I never worked on those old systems, my first UNIX
experience was with HP-UX in the late 1980s (where I accidentally
landed in vi and could not get out, but that's another story).

>One of the first usenix
> tapes has patches I wrote in about 1976 to add simple variables with
> single character names to that shell.  It was an improvement, but the
> Bourne shell was way better.

https://grosskurth.ca/bib/1976/mashey-command.pdf (written by Mashey)
credits the original shell to Thompson, so I believe we are talking
about the same shell, just with different names.

> Re when this stuff was invented, I did some work on CP/67 when I was
> in high school in about 1970 and I recall that even then people
> routinely ran files of CMS commands. Don't remember whether there were
> variables and control flow or that came later with REXX.

Hmmm... I looked at

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/370/VM/370/Release_1/GX20-1926-1_VM_370_Quick_Guide_For_Users__Rel_1_Apr73.pdf

and found a reference to $LOOP and a reference to "tokens" (which I
suppose are variables), so that definitely predated the UNIX shells.