Ken Thompson – Communications of the ACM

Research and Advances May 1 2022

The Go Programming Language and Environment

Released as open source in November 2009, Go has become the foundation for critical infrastructure at every major cloud provider. Its creators look back on how Go got here and why it has stuck around.

Architecture and Hardware

Author Archives

Research and Advances Aug 1 1984

Reflections on trusting trust

To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Jan 1 1983

The UNIX time-sharing system

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 a 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.

Research and Advances Nov 1 1979

Password security: a case history

This paper describes the history of the design of the password security scheme on a remotely accessed time-sharing system. The present design was the result of countering observed attempts to penetrate the system. The result is a compromise between extreme security and ease of use.

Research and Advances Jul 1 1974

The UNIX time-sharing system

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.

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Jun 1 1968

Programming Techniques: Regular expression search algorithm

A method for locating specific character strings embedded in character text is described and an implementation of this method in the form of a compiler is discussed. The compiler accepts a regular expression as source language and produces an IBM 7094 program as object language. The object program then accepts the text to be searched as input and produces a signal every time an embedded string in the text matches the given regular expression. Examples, problems, and solutions are also presented.

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