[Info-vax] VMS on Raspberry Pi 5

[Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake)]

On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 1:00:40 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2023-11-15 20:31, Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake) wrote: 
> > On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 9:04:28 AM UTC-8, Richard Kettlewell wrote: 
> >> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste... at eircom.net> writes: 
> >>> Johnny Billquist <b... at softjar.se> wrote: 
> >>>> Well. I don't fully agree with that, but I'm fine with just disagreeing 
> >>>> without getting into any further discussions. I can certainly dig up 
> >>>> other tools under Unix which left the "unix paradigm" behind a long time 
> >>>> ago, if you want. 
> >>> 
> >>> Emacs springs to mind. 
> >> Originated outside Unix, I think. 
> >> 
> >> dd seems like a good example. Present at least as far back as V5 Unix 
> >> but its interface is belligerently different from any other Unix tool, 
> >> and it’s at best an uneasy fit with the “do one thing well” approach of 
> >> many of its siblings. 
> > 
> > The reason "dd" is so different from other UNIX tools is that it's a parody of the "DD" statement in IBM's JCL.
> Not sure it's meant as a parody. Don't even know what one would want to 
> paridy such a thing. But I do remember seeing/hearing about it coming 
> from some IBM thing. 
> 
> Johnny

Dennis Ritchie wrote that "dd was always named after JCL dd cards." https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/712856/why-does-dd-use-in-its-parameters

The POSIX rationale says "Certainly, many of the operands could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would have resulted in the classic hyphenated option letters. In this version of this volume of POSIX.1-2017, dd retains its curious JCL-like syntax due to the large number of applications that depend on the historical implementation."

Whether you call it a parody or an homage, "dd" is 100% inspired by IBM's JCL.