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It came from... the HOLD SPACE!

(Alien horrors from the dawn of Unix)

Length: 70 minutes

Description

How did we get anything done before the invention of Perl, Python, and those other guys? Answer: It wasn't always easy. In this talk, I discuss the tools and systems for building Unix utilities from 1975 until about 1990, including lex, ed, sed, expr, bc, and other ancient mysteries.

Outline

• It Came From... the HOLD SPACE
• The Dawn of Time
• Filtering printer motions
• ed
• sed
• Shell scripting
• Shell extensions
• Sparks

I gave this talk to the Philadelphia area Linux User Group (PLUG) on 7 December, 2011. Thanks to PLUG for inviting me, and to Ricardo Signes for help with the title of the talk.

There is a blog article that expands on the talk materials a bit.

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