[ih] Fwd: Reporter query on the history of greater-than in quoted replies

[Tony Finch]

Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:
>
> So I'm going to guess that it came up in the 80s.  Anyone have old
> copies of MH source code that might show it?

This turned out to be a much better idea than looking at mail(1) :-)

4.3BSD isn't amazingly early, but its version of MH includes some lovely
bits about quoted replies. The READ-ME is a message dated 30 Jan 1986 from
Bob Desinger who describes it as

> prepended with those nice "> " netnews-style borders

https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/BSD-4_3-Snapshot-Development/usr/contrib/mh/miscellany/replies

Tony.
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