[ih] from whence cometh ">" ?

[John R. Levine]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2025, Dave Crocker wrote:
> Since Unix was on the Arpanet by no later than 1975. (I don't remember what 
> year we got it at UCLA, but I know Rand had it by then.
>
> So, 'long before' would almost require being before Unix was developed.

I remembered that I have the v6 and v7 source code on my laptop, as one 
does.

The 1975 v6 version of /bin/mail had no special From processing and no 
network code.  The v7 version had code to work with uucp and has the >From 
hack.  The date on the source file is May 5 1979 so that's the latest 
possible but it was more likely added in 1978 when uucp was written.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly