The Creation of the UNIX* Operating System: The manual even warned of bugs

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The manual even warned of bugs

Most manuals are often an afterthought, something cobbled together after the product is made. The UNIX manual, in contrast, reflected the philosophy of UNIX in design and content. It even told you where the bugs were.

Sandy Fraser.

The manual style initially was set by Ritchie, but McIlroy soon took over its compilation as a love of labor. "The fact that there was a manual, that he (McIlroy) insisted on a high standard for the manual, meant that he insisted on a high standard for every one of the programs that was documented," explained Sandy Fraser.

Fraser, then a member of technical staff in the Computing Science Research Center, said that before a program got into the manual, it often had to be rewritten to meet the manual's standards. "And then add to all that, it's probably the first manual that ever had a section with bugs in it. That's a level of honesty you don't find."

"Cleaning something up so you can talk about it is quite typical of UNIX," McIlroy said. "Every time another edition of the manual would be made, there would be a flurry of activity. When you wrote down the 'uglies,' you'd say, 'We can't put this in print,' and you'd take out a feature or put features in to make them easier to talk about."

Fraser summed up the approach of the UNIX developers: "I think the level of intellectual honesty that was present in that activity is rare."

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