[Discuss] learn or teach programs

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Mike Small <smallm at panix.com> wrote:

>
> Was re-reading The Unix Programming Environment by K&P. In the first
> chapter it suggests you look for a program named learn or teach on your
> system. It's a program that gives you interactive lessons on the Unix
> command line as well as some tools like vi and ms troff macros. It's
> sort of like the emacs tutorial but for Unix, in that you get Unix
> prompts to play with within the exercises.
> .....
> Does anyone know the history of this or similar programs and why they
> didn't make it into this decade (or did they)?  Did any Linux distro
> ever have one? It strikes me as something that still ought to exist and
> at least be available using the package manager, if not be in the base
> system or core packages.
>

I think the problem is that learn was covered by the AT&T (not BSD) license
and therefore it couldn't just be carried over to the various free/open
source
"unix" environments.   I believe those early version were eventually
licensed
freely by Caldera, but by then it was too late.   One thing that might be
interesting
would be to run those early version of Unix (V7) in emulation.   In that
case,
the old "learn" program would correspond well with the system that you were
using.
Here's one link to get you started:

http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/pdp11.htm

Google will undoubtedly find more.

Bill