One-liner Program - History

History

The word One-liner has two references in the index of the book The AWK Programming Language (the book is often referred to by the abbreviation TAPL). It explains the programming language AWK, which is part of the Unix operating system. The authors explain the birth of the One-liner paradigm with their daily work on early Unix machines:

The 1977 version had only a few built-in variables and predefined functions. It was designed for writing short programs Our model was that an invocation would be one or two lines long, typed in and used immediately. Defaults were chosen to match this style We, being the authors, knew how the language was supposed to be used, and so we only wrote one-liners.

Notice that this original definition of a One-liner implies immediate execution of the program without any compilation. So, in a strict sense, only source code for interpreted languages qualifies as a One-liner. But this strict understanding of a One-liner was broadened in 1985 when the IOCCC introduced the category of Best One Liner for C, which is a compiled language.

Read more about this topic:  One-liner Program

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
    —Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)

    “The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
    —Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)

    “[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
    —Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)