Initial commit

tpl/cat-v/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful
+========================================
+
+At the USENIX Summer Conference of 1983 [Rob Pike](http://herpolhode.com/rob/)
+made a presentation titled '*UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful*' and
+together with Brian Kernighan wrote the paper '*Program Design Design in the
+UNIX Environment*' ([pdf version](unix_prog_design.pdf), [ps
+version](unix_prog_design.ps)).
+
+This was a prelude for their famous book [The Unix Programming
+Environment](http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/upe/) that today is considered *the
+bible of Unix*.
+
+Unfortunately their advice has been completely ignored, and today Unix has become
+overcome by exactly the kind of mistakes they warned against.
+
+
+    Bell Laboratories
+
+    Murray Hill, NJ (dec!ucb)wav!research!rob
+
+    It seems that UNIX has become the victim of cancerous growth at the hands of
+    organizations such as UCB. 4.2BSD is an order of magnitude larger than Version
+    5, but, Pike claims, not ten times better.
+
+    The talk reviews reasons for UNIX's popularity and shows, using UCB cat as a
+    primary example, how UNIX has grown fat. cat isn't for printing files with line
+    numbers, it isn't for compressing multiple blank lines, it's not for looking at
+    non-printing ASCII characters, it's for concatenating files.
+
+    We are reminded that ls isn't the place for code to break a single column into
+    multiple ones, and that mailnews shouldn't have its own more processing or joke
+    encryption code.
+
+    Rob carried the standard well for the "spirit of UNIX," and you can look
+    forward to a deeper look at the philosophy of UNIX in his forthcoming book.
+