Diff (Unix)
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Diff (Unix)
In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but it is like Levenshtein distance in that it tries to determine the smallest set of deletions and insertions to create one file from the other. The utility displays the changes in one of several standard formats, such that both humans or computers can parse the changes, and use them for patching. Typically, ''diff'' is used to show the changes between two versions of the same file. Modern implementations also support binary files. The output is called a "diff", or a patch, since the output can be applied with the Unix program . The output of similar file comparison utilities is also called a "diff"; like the use of the word "grep" for describing the act of searching, the word ''diff'' became a generic term for calculating data difference and ...
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Douglas McIlroy
Malcolm Douglas McIlroy (born 1932) is a mathematician, engineer, and programmer. As of 2019 he is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College. McIlroy is best known for having originally proposed Unix pipelines and developed several Unix tools, such as spell, diff, sort, join, graph, speak, and tr. He was also one of the pioneering researchers of macro processors and programming language extensibility. He participated in the design of multiple influential programming languages, particularly PL/I, SNOBOL, ALTRAN, TMG and C++. His seminal work on software componentization and code reuse makes him a pioneer of component-based software engineering and software product line engineering. Biography McIlroy earned his bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT in 1959 for his thesis ''On the Solution of the Differential Equations of Conical Shells'' (advisor Eric Reissner). He taught at MIT from 1 ...
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Patch (Unix)
The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a ''patch file''. The patch file (also called a ''patch'' for short) is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as ''applying the patch'' or simply ''patching'' the files. History The original patch program was written by Larry Wall (who went on to create the Perl programming language) and posted to mod.sources (which later became comp.sources.unix) in May 1985. A variant of the program (but not the only one) is part of the GNU project and is maintained by the FSF. Usage context Developed by a programmer for other programmers, patch was frequently used for updating source code to a newer version. Because of this, many people came to associate patches with source code, whereas patches can in fact b ...
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Alfred Aho
Alfred Vaino Aho (born August 9, 1941) is a Canadian computer scientist best known for his work on programming languages, compilers, and related algorithms, and his textbooks on the art and science of computer programming. Aho was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 for his contributions to the fields of algorithms and programming tools. He and his long-time collaborator Jeffrey Ullman are the recipients of the 2020 Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science. Career Aho received a B.A.Sc. (1963) in Engineering Physics from the University of Toronto, then an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967) in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from Princeton University. He conducted research at Bell Labs from 1967 to 1991, and again from 1997 to 2002 as Vice President of the Computing Sciences Research Center. Since 1995, he has held the Lawrence Gussman Professorship in Computer Science at Columbia University. He served as chair of ...
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PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, making it one of DEC's most successful product lines. The PDP-11 is considered by some experts to be the most popular minicomputer. The PDP-11 included a number of innovative features in its instruction set and additional general-purpose registers that made it much easier to program than earlier models in the PDP series. Further, the innovative Unibus system allowed external devices to be easily interfaced to the system using direct memory access, opening the system to a wide variety of peripherals. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time computing applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. The ease of programming of the PDP-11 made it very popular for general-purpose computing uses also. ...
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Heuristic
A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples that employ heuristics include using trial and error, a rule of thumb or an educated guess. Heuristics are the strategies derived from previous experiences with similar problems. These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract issues. When an individual applies a heuristic in practice, it generally performs as expected. However it can alternatively cre ...
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Mike Lesk
Michael E. Lesk (born 1945) is an American computer scientist. Biography In the 1960s, Michael Lesk worked for the SMART Information Retrieval System project, wrote much of its retrieval code and did many of the retrieval experiments, as well as obtaining a BA degree in Physics and Chemistry from Harvard College in 1964 and a PhD from Harvard University in Chemical Physics in 1969. From 1970 to 1984, Lesk worked at Bell Labs in the group that built Unix. Lesk wrote Unix tools for word processing (''tbl'', ''Refer (software), refer'', and the standard ''ms'' macro package, all for ''troff''), for compiling (''Lex (software), Lex''), and for networking (''uucp''). He also wrote the Portable I/O Library (the predecessor to stdio.h in C (programming language), C) and contributed significantly to the development of the C (programming language), C language preprocessor. In 1984, he left to work for Bellcore, where he managed the computer science research group. There, Lesk worked on s ...
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GECOS
General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS, ; originally GECOS, General Electric Comprehensive Operating Supervisor) is a family of operating systems oriented toward the 36-bit GE/Honeywell mainframe computers. The original version of GCOS was developed by General Electric beginning in 1962. The operating system is still used today in its most recent versions (GCOS 7 and GCOS 8) on servers and mainframes produced by Groupe Bull, primarily through emulation, to provide continuity with legacy mainframe environments. GCOS 7 and GCOS 8 are separate branches of the operating system and continue to be developed alongside each other. History GECOS The GECOS operating system was developed by General Electric for the 36-bit GE-600 series in 1962–1964; GE released GECOS I (with a prototype 635) in April 1965, GECOS II in November 1965 and GECOS III (with time-sharing) in 1967. It bore a close resemblance architecturally to IBSYS on the IBM 7094 and less to DOS/360 on the System/360. ...
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Stephen C
Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or "protomartyr") of the Christian Church. In English, Stephen is most commonly pronounced as ' (). The name, in both the forms Stephen and Steven, is often shortened to Steve or Stevie. The spelling as Stephen can also be pronounced which is from the Greek original version, Stephanos. In English, the female version of the name is Stephanie. Many surnames are derived from the first name, including Stephens, Stevens, Stephenson, and Stevenson, all of which mean "Stephen's (son)". In modern times the name has sometimes been given with intentionally non-standard spelling, such as Stevan or Stevon. A common variant of the name used in English is Stephan ; related names that have found some cu ...
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Hunt–Szymanski Algorithm
In computer science, the Hunt–Szymanski algorithm, also known as Hunt–McIlroy algorithm, is a solution to the longest common subsequence problem. It was one of the first non-heuristic algorithms used in diff which compares a pair of files each represented as a sequence of lines. To this day, variations of this algorithm are found in incremental version control systems, wiki engines, and molecular phylogenetics research software. The worst-case complexity for this algorithm is , but in practice is rather expected. History The algorithm was proposed by Harold S. Stone as a generalization of a special case solved by Thomas G. Szymanski. James W. Hunt refined the idea, implemented the first version of the candidate-listing algorithm used by diff and embedded it into an older framework of Douglas McIlroy. The description of the algorithm appeared as a technical report by Hunt and McIlroy in 1976. The following year, a variant of the algorithm was finally published in a joint pap ...
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James W
James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (other), various kings named James * Saint James (other) * James (musician) * James, brother of Jesus Places Canada * James Bay, a large body of water * James, Ontario United Kingdom * James College, a college of the University of York United States * James, Georgia, an unincorporated community * James, Iowa, an unincorporated community * James City, North Carolina * James City County, Virginia ** James City (Virginia Company) ** James City Shire * James City, Pennsylvania * St. James City, Florida Arts, entertainment, and media * ''James'' (2005 film), a Bollywood film * ''James'' (2008 film), an Irish short film * ''James'' (2022 film), an Indian Kannada-language film * James the Red Engine, a character in ''Thomas the Tank ...
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Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by multinational company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world. Researchers working at Bell Laboratories are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. In the late 19th century, the laboratory began as the Western Electric Engineering Department, l ...
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POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interfaces (APIs), along with command line shells and utility interfaces, for software compatibility (portability) with variants of Unix and other operating systems. POSIX is also a trademark of the IEEE. POSIX is intended to be used by both application and system developers. Name Originally, the name "POSIX" referred to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, released in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated as IEEE 1003 and the ISO/IEC standard number is ISO/IEC 9945. The standards emerged from a project that began in 1984 building on work from related activity in the ''/usr/group'' association. Richard Stallman suggested the name ''POSIX'' (pronounced as ''pahz-icks,'' as in ''positive'', not as ''poh-six'') to the IEEE instead of former ...
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