Hacker News Reader

Comment by gamache | Hacker News Reader

There must be some OCR errors in there -- the system call "create" was spelled with an "e"!

Well, there's this quote by Ken Thompson, who was asked if he'd do anything different if were to start over on Unix: "I would spell creat with an e".

With that in mind, it's kind of funny to see that "correction" made by some OCR software.

It's not an OCR error - the error appears in the original. If you look at Page 8 of the scanned PDF[1], it says:

  filep = create(name, mode)

[1] http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Mc...

Sure about that?

   CREAT(2)                    BSD System Calls Manual                   CREAT(2)

   NAME
        creat -- create a new file

   LIBRARY
        Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

   SYNOPSIS
        #include <fcntl.h>

        int
        creat(const char *path, mode_t mode);

   DESCRIPTION
        This interface is made obsolete by: open(2).

        The creat() function is the same as:

              open(path, O_CREAT | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY, mode);

   SEE ALSO
        open(2)

   HISTORY
        The creat() function appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

   BSD                              June 2, 1993                              BSD

You're missing the joke -- the recovered "Unix 0" manual seems to spell it 'create', even though it was 'creat' in subsequent versions.

    3.5.2 Create

    To create a new file, the following call is used.

         filep = create(name, mode)

But it's listed correctly as a system call.

    A1.6 creat

    To create or recreate a file,

          sys creat
          name
          mode

I think he's saying that in this document, "creat" is sometimes spelled with an "e", indicating that the OCR process overcorrected.

  3.5.2 Create
  
  To create a new file, the following call is used.
  
       filep = create(name, mode)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com