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imglorp on Nov 16, 2015 | parent | context | favorite | on: Show HN: Nixar – New design of Linux command line

The Unix command line probably started off small and clean until the real world intruded and commands needed slight variations. Then arguments, parameters, redirections expansions, expressions, and all that other stuff was added as a necessary evil.

codezero on Nov 16, 2015 [–]

The earliest shell had most of these! [1][2]

Arguments, parameters, pattern matching, redirection, piping.

Surprisingly, this wasn't enough so Bourne became defacto in Unix v7.

Indeed, Thompson shell was small and clean, but it wasn't a spartan as you might think.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_shell [2] http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/sh [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_shell

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