Re: System UICs

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:26:11 -0400, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

including everybody's favorite [0,0] directory, err, [000000].

I can remember that "[000000...]" was a valid directory wildcard spec, but
"[0,0...]" was not.

Also remember "<" ... ">" was valid for directories, and a dot instead of
semicolon for file versions, à la TOPS-10.

TOPS-20, not Tops-10.  Tops-10 filespecs were always, and only[1], of the form

DEVICE:FILNAM.TYP[P,PN{,SFD{,SFD{,SFD{,SFD{,SFD}}}}}]

where the braces are a metasyntactic indication that up to 5 levels of "subfile
directory" could be specified.  It wasn't *really* a hierarchical file system,
but it kind of looked that way.

[1] The user could type the PPN before the file name+type, but if she asked the
OS to echo it back, it would come out in the canonical form.

TOPS-20 filespecs:

DEVICE:<DIRECTORY{.*}>FILENAME.FILETYPE.VERSION

where a hierarchical directory specification could be up to 39 characters long,
and a file name and file type string cold be up to 39 characters long.  The
version was a decimal number in the range 1--131071.

In the TENEX predecessor to TOPS-20, the separator for the version number was a
semicolon rather than a period.

WAITS never implemented the SFD concept.

--
Rich Alderson   news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen