jaw@ames-lm.UUCP (James A. Woods) (04/07/84)
# Boreese, oubay losya e bellkou!
-- Natasha
(Russian for "Boris, kill moose and squirrel")
Mind you that the U.S.S.R. has already made inroads into UNIX.
Rumor has it that the defunct dsw(1) command, an interactive file remover
now usurped by 'rm -i *', stood for
do sweedaneeyeh
or, "goodbye." DSW is also part of CB lingo.
-- James A. Woods {dual,hplabs,hao,research}!ames-lm!jaw
P.S.
Pardon the transliterations, but the net does not pass Cyrillic well.
P.P.S.
Bullwinkle lives!rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) (04/08/84)
I thought dsw came from delete from switch register. Oh, well...
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (04/15/84)
> Mind you that the U.S.S.R. has already made inroads into UNIX. > Rumor has it that the defunct dsw(1) command, an interactive file remover > now usurped by 'rm -i *', stood for > do sweedaneeyeh > or, "goodbye." DSW is also part of CB lingo. Forgive my Russian, it's not been exercised for several years, but... K sozhaljenju, sovsjem govno. "dsw" stood for "delete from switches"; it was a utility on the old PDP-11/20 UNIX. One would set the directory offset of the file to be deleted into the console switches and run the "dsw" program. It would drop a core, which when run would delete that file. Source of this story: Dennis M. Ritchie. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
rick@seismo.UUCP (Rick Adams) (04/16/84)
The final answer to dsw:
From research!dmr Wed Aug 12 00:02:17 1981
Subject: dsw manual page (honest)
DSW(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual DSW(1)
NAME
dsw - delete from switches
SYNOPSIS
(put number in console switches)
dsw
core
DESCRIPTION
_d_s_w reads the console switches to obtain a number _n, prints
the name of the _n-th file in the current directory, and
exits, leaving a core image file named _c_o_r_e. If this core
file is executed, the file whose name was last printed is
unlinked (see _u_n_l_i_n_k(2)).
The command is useful for deleting files whose names are
difficult to type.
SEE ALSO
rm(1), unlink(2)
BUGS
This command was written in 2 minutes to delete a particular
file that managed to get an 0200 bit in its name. It should
work by printing the name of each file in a specified direc-
tory and requesting a `y' or `n' answer. Better, it should
be an option of _r_m(1).
The name is mnemonic, but likely to cause trouble in the
future.
Printed 8/11/81 PDP-7 local 1grw@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Wichman) (04/16/84)
[Heilige Heilbut, Wombatmensch]
Well, I was told that dsw stood for "department of sanitary
works".
no cute signoff,
-Glenn