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Branden Robinson" To: Alejandro Colomar Cc: Seth McDonald , "linux-man@vger.kernel.org" Subject: origin of alloca(3) (was: Undocumented systems/standards PWB and 32V) Message-ID: <20260101235310.fejv4d7uvft7unzt@illithid> References: <20260101054632.pw4fyjijp2hmrerb@illithid> 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="ajgpl5goiko7e7jp" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: --ajgpl5goiko7e7jp Content-Type: text/plain; protected-headers=v1; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: origin of alloca(3) (was: Undocumented systems/standards PWB and 32V) MIME-Version: 1.0 Hi Alex, At 2026-01-01T14:17:35+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > Hi Branden, Seth, >=20 > On Wed, Dec 31, 2025 at 11:46:32PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > Hi Seth, > >=20 > > 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. > >=20 > > Yes. Most likely. I have some remarks on nomenclature, orthography, > > and history. > >=20 > > 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. > >=20 > > PWB came in at least two revisions--the original, retro-branded PWB1, > > and a second, sometimes called "PWB/UNIX 2.0". >=20 > It would be good to check in which one alloca(3) was present. There's _an_ `alloca()` in PWB/Unix 1.0. https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3DPWB1/sys/source/s4/util/all= oca.s It's not declared in any header file I can find, and as you can see it's written in PDP-11 assembly, but it's there, and appears to do what a modern C programmer would expect of it.[1] It appeared to get stuck into a library called "libpw.a". Static, of course, because there were no shared libraries back then. https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3DPWB1/sys/source/s4/util/mak= efile Close enough? :) Regards, Branden [1] I see some other familiar stuff here... https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3DPWB1/sys/source/s4/stdio --ajgpl5goiko7e7jp Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEh3PWHWjjDgcrENwa0Z6cfXEmbc4FAmlXCNwACgkQ0Z6cfXEm bc5cZQ/6A2myKsq/8qhbOCu48lSKWrFn0aj5C0A6krFVZYOW60DbMy7CZWqhXqde McIJ2kxDfHAJH/7d1czsnMhTe5N/BibufY4Syog8TZqRBkNt53yP4m2O5g24MEyi 2tu7xbR5XiGOcgvX14zYmNkQasIC45iYEMI/n26yjEgtypHjs7YYjvj+PovTL/xG U0mIFbxcEsMNN+FMZECJnIFWbyT9DcRAdd5W1Uiu1BsAA5SkRx/7u3EifB6AAgQg PJ2wY6TFTBEp1lPlql65nRP8EqejJV8Dne92uMKHdDspz2AxSA+N9eW/jpJTXUg8 EzJuUk3d9i/NKHjKv4TkAngfs91CMvTD/d4GOxtjpk54rLX/kVXdtpciuuyI1uek PW0AIJH59B0pHhMhvUQCFy3b5w/ok5EclVcqFRH0asqVcwEWErZL8lpmMOJBnowA 8jTvC2UxegMNDprROC0Gr5KEq20yo31pfNb7BrV7N2bxCKdVORBghqQDvGJf403a 7CjDk1dDfPpzAROf1wgcdikNnKZs8PUrK3cXlZqS8gzdhys+lg7uZJ2d/JEiLTpc oUaRq9jjdCef4ny2XpRR8NvqEdRo/UYmI9q4JiukuT3COzxjdDK8VGH7kmroiPxo Nyb3A10vkhPrFQMYtwyYHaFbm8qPH3pMxqD+9ZJjm1j7VAxZkYA= =698J -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ajgpl5goiko7e7jp--