L A Walsh wrote:
They didn't have one command for listing files, and then require another one
to list properties (stat), and then another to line things up and then another
to
put things out in a different format.
Uh, no. For example, you can see examples of using two or more commands in
Kernighan and Mashey's 1981 paper "The Unix Programming Environment", which
contains this example:
ls | pr -4 | lpr
which lists files with one command, and then uses another to line them up,
exactly the sort of thing you're saying these people didn't have. The paper goes
on to give statistics of how often people in the early Unix years used the
technique recommended if you don't like the default behavior: have a small shell
script that establishes the behavior you want. Kernighan and Mashey write, "it
has become common for each user to have a collection of personal commands, a
result of the fact that the shell permits users to alter the default search path
for finding commands. These personal commands are almost invariably shell
programs.... people make significant use of shell procedures to customize the
general environment to their personal needs".
So it's not like we're suggesting anything new here.
Kernighan BW, Mashey JR. The Unix programming environment. Computer. 1981
Apr;14(4):12-24. https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/1981/04/01667315.pdf