The UNIX time-sharing system
The work
| Authors | Dennis M. Ritchie; Ken Thompson |
|---|---|
| Editors | |
| Type | article |
| Year | 1974 |
| Citekey | ritchie1974unix |
Where it appeared
| Published in | Communications of the ACM |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 365--375 |
Identifiers
| DOI | 10.1145/361011.361061 |
|---|---|
| OpenAlex | W2418656106 |
Access
| Landing page | https://doi.org/10.1145/361011.361061 |
|---|---|
| Free full text | https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/361011.361061 |
Abstract
UNIX is a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/40 and 11/45 computers. It offers a number of features seldom found even in larger operating systems, including: (1) a hierarchical file system incorporating demountable volumes; (2) compatible file, device, and inter-process I/O; (3) the ability to initiate asynchronous processes; (4) system command language selectable on a per-user basis; and (5) over 100 subsystems including a dozen languages. This paper discusses the nature and implementation of the file system and of the user command interface.
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How it got here
| How it got here | agent via openalex |
|---|---|
| Added | 2026-08-05 00:00 UTC |
| Approved by | a person 2026-08-07 14:50 UTC |
Filed under
Cite it as
@article{ritchie1974unix,
title = {The UNIX time-sharing system},
author = {Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson},
year = {1974},
journal = {Communications of the ACM},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
volume = {17},
number = {7},
pages = {365--375},
doi = {10.1145/361011.361061},
}
This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/ritchie1974unix/ and will keep doing so.