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Branden Robinson" To: Seth McDonald Cc: Alejandro Colomar , "linux-man@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: Undocumented systems/standards PWB and 32V Message-ID: <20260101054632.pw4fyjijp2hmrerb@illithid> References: Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="uq4ev4yjxbkrs4n6" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: --uq4ev4yjxbkrs4n6 Content-Type: text/plain; protected-headers=v1; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: Undocumented systems/standards PWB and 32V MIME-Version: 1.0 Hi Seth, At 2026-01-01T04:45:28+0000, Seth McDonald wrote: > Starting the year off strong, here's a classic bug report. The man > page for alloca(3) lists two systems/standards in its HISTORY: PWB and > 32V. >=20 > $ man ./man3/alloca.3 | sed -n '/HISTORY/,/^$/p' > HISTORY > PWB, 32V. >=20 > After some Googling, I assume these are referring to the PWB/UNIX and > UNIX/32V operating systems, respectively. Yes. Most likely. I have some remarks on nomenclature, orthography, and history. PWB stands for "Programmer's Workbench". It was a flavor of Unix maintained and sustained outside of the Bell Labs Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The CSRC is where Unix was born and where famous names like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Brian Kernighan worked. Eventually, the flavor of Unix produced by the CSRC came to be known as "Research Unix". In the late 1980s the CSRC decided that the Unix system was an unrewarding vehicle for further _research_, and shifted its emphasis to Plan 9. Over time, the Jack Welch-ification of AT&T[1] meant that research at Bell Labs became less ambitious and eventually halted. PWB came in at least two revisions--the original, retro-branded PWB1, and a second, sometimes called "PWB/UNIX 2.0". Back then, AT&T corporate demanded that full capitals be used to spell "Unix". This however was contrary to the preferences of the people who actually invented and developed it.[2][3] I'd say, if you want to side with the suits, say "UNIX". If you want to side with the engineers, say "Unix". Sources conflict on how to spell "32V". I've seen it thus but also as "V32",[4] which may be an error by McIlroy in an otherwise authoritative source. If it is an error, it's an understandable one arising from the naming conventions applied to editions of CSRC Unix, starting with (again, retrospectively) First Edition in 1971 up through Research Unix Tenth Edition in 1989. These were, and still are, often keyed in as "V1" through "V10" for short, and the "V" spoken as "version". > However, they aren't listed in the standards(7) man page nor anywhere > else in the docs. The first few entries in this document aren't standards; they're more like convenient _milestones_ from which we can infer a loose specification. Plain "PWB" won't do as a standard because, as noted above, it saw at least two different releases. Two more remarks on PWB Unix: the system with the best claim to being a successor of PWB 2.0 is Unix System III (released internally within AT&T in 1980, but not commercially until--so some sources say--1982.[4] The reason for the delay would, one supposes, involve the divestiture of AT&T, that is, its dissolution as a "legal" monopoly, a watershed event in U.S. commerce.[5] It's one that was crucially important to Unix history, because prior to divestiture, AT&T was legally prohibited =66rom operating commercially as a supplier of computer hardware or software, per a 1956 consent decree it entered into with the U.S. federal government.[6] In practice, AT&T violated the consent decree with increasing overtness from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s, marketing Unix System III and then System V as commercial products[7] and charging ever higher license fees for Unix as software.[8] "For example, John Lions, a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, reported that his school was able to acquire a copy of research UNIX Edition 5 for $150 ($110 Australian) in December, 1974, including tape and manuals. (See "An Interview with John Lions," in Unix Review, October, 1985, pg. 51)"[8] (Aussies may be surprised to learn that that the AUD was once "stronger" than the USD. As a former resident, I was!) > As such, the two systems should likely either be added to standards(7) > so they can be referenced, Yes, maybe under a different heading. They weren't standards, but they _are_ worthwhile benchmarks. > or be removed from the HISTORY of alloca(3) and replaced with another > system/standard. There was no _standard_ for anything to do with Unix until the /usr/group user group (get it?) produced one in 1984.[10] > I would think they should be added to standards(7), but perhaps > they're too old be notable enough. Wikipedia says they were released > in 1977 & 1979, while the oldest standards listed in standards(7) are > K&R C (1978) and V7 (1979). Again, K&R C wasn't standardized; it had a reference manual, which is not the same thing. Maybe we should term such things "milestones". I don't think age alone is a sufficient criterion to reject them, but when citing non-standards in "STANDARDS" sections of man pages, we might want to use English to clarify the matter. To build on a point of Alex's, whether we can get at authoritative documentation for citation purposes (and to settle or avoid arguments over facts) is of more probative value than a standard or milestone's novelty or lack thereof. Some things that are old are important, and others aren't--just as with new things. Regards, Branden [1] https://www.nhbr.com/a-lesson-from-ge/ [2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2015-01/msg00026.html [3] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2015-01/msg00029.html [4] https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [6] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/552/131/152= 5975/ [7] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-December/032907.html [8] https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unix-history/tree/main/licenses [9] https://www.tuhs.org/Mirror/Hauben/unix-Part_II.html [10] https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=3Dpublications:standards --uq4ev4yjxbkrs4n6 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEh3PWHWjjDgcrENwa0Z6cfXEmbc4FAmlWCjEACgkQ0Z6cfXEm bc79nA/8Cae+EFYBrh9wuuXk00yHHDtPajsL12IFMSytAkZWrYdJJscU1LAPe/bd C3RFo+j1exr9v8gYLFjWH7F4v4Yq18y52yH8Vlwl1dQG8TP9BWd6H8Bz1+1vaihj p459u9kZCjEOVi/Hs/+cMUyATCXMM+wMpMqvKmx6LvJl3IrsweIuo2KaMvi4soRP oZ1BDxTsDRM4aIVCvuqYzBBashkTgS+cSk+pnbpaOGXAoEFIgY+NvXLxMoZfeVZH S8LfpTc5IUpujLi2tGE62AFrRpEQ1Z57x3s/YpwDlm7NjNB6GVuq82b/HMFQz7sT 5lJvGD3nDU7wWNxDOhmKZq/XPb9btYlsaErYstn26faRPGLeNDqeOQa25eXiHjOe ogKXUDFiIHlC4Aj7joaf632dxlmhIAo8ictEXcbKvt7hk6rrk3cGeN8pWEfo1qqT Alpk9bBHAqH2mDcFpCIFTVEkgAEaQCK6XY3ujD8MscmdZuRypVjFzEd0N6eDGXS9 oUJytL86JJxyO1mdl9sefHDz7EaK4wtOLngt67nNA9DVFyCWxV58/xRlqR4ZzDxP 981cKnJRWViAPfCjg2OPdiOLk4C9mv1uLxG8SI0rli6Veah7mjC0KthB/v7qQ/N7 1jxKWL0Fm2e8AaiYCK9ynRD1AejG2iOYQKCwKO1KmDXohEHE0b8= =MUW9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --uq4ev4yjxbkrs4n6--