Comment on Bell Labs 'Unix' Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball

• xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think it’s actually quite elegant. No matter what it has to skip over argument 0 which will be the executable name echo.
  If the subtraction was removed and the loop changed to <, it would then need to do an addition or subtraction inside the loop to check if it’s the last argument.

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  • palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The real question might be whether the compiler was smart enough to change var++ and var-- into ++var and --var when the initial values aren't needed.

    As compiler optimisations go, it's a fairly obvious one, but it was 1974 and putting checks like that in the compiler would increase its size and slow it down when both space and time were at a premium.

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    • xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Well, good news, the source code is right there. Someone can go check (it probably won’t be me)

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    • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I was going to guess the same regarding the time period.

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  • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Or they just drop the =

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