🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JEFF.92Apr9091426@dspprd.sps.mot.com> jeff@dspprd.sps.mot.com (Jeff Enderwick) writes:
>	I have heard that the old DEC TENEX (sp?) shell had an as-you-type
>	command completion feature. Is this true ? The reason that I'm asking
>	is that someone has patented the data structures that would be needed
>	to implement such a shell.

TENEX was BBN's paging version of DEC's PDP-10 circa late '60s and
early '70s, from which TOPS-20 was derived circa 1975.  I don't recall
whether it (TENEX) had command-completion in that fashion; I believe it
required one to type an ESCcape to complete from the COMND JSYS data
structures and tables (whose structures are also in Columbia's ccmd package
and used in their UNIX version of the TOPS-20 MM mailer).

Command completion like you describe DEFINITELY existed on the SDS-930
computers at UC Berkeley re: Project Genie (circa 1963-66).

The person involved with both Project Genie and TENEX was L. Peter Deutsch
(at UCB, then BBN, and now at Xerox' PARC-Place in Palo Alto CA).  He's the
person who should be able to give you the technical answer you seek.

Software patents: blecch.

Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]