What the C and Bourne shells have to teach us

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What the C and Bourne shells have to teach us

Since the early days of geekdom we've been trying to find the inate machine intelligence in the hardware around us. It started with Eliza. Now there's a possibility that true smarts have always been in the UNIX shell.


Paul Barth writes:

Since we are all now great UNIX wizards, the follow might be humorous. It came to me from Umass.

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

[ ...some removed... ]

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% (-
(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

Have you found errors nontrivial or marginal, factual, analytical and illogical, arithmetical, temporal, or even typographical? Please let me know; drop me email. Thanks!
 

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