Beebe@science.utah.edu (Nelson H.F. Beebe) (01/26/89)
TOPS-20 has had a Simulate Terminal Input (STI) system call for years; BSD 4.x probably copied it. It is of use for other things besides mail. For example, TeX (and my DVI drivers), output a command to spool the output, but don't write the final newline. If the user wants the output spooled, she just types a return; otherwise Ctl-U or Ctl-C will cancel the request. STI can also be used to feed input to a program that is hardwired to read from the terminal (this is rarely a problem on UNIX, but TOPS-20 has a few such examples). -------