Phoenix (computer) - Software

Software

The staff were motivated to write their own system software for the IBM installation as a result of their dissatisfaction with IBM's own interactive command interpreter TSO. The initial product of their efforts was a Phoenix command interpreter which completely replaced the TSO command interpreter and was also available as a language for controlling batch job submissions through the use of a single IBM JCL command to invoke the Phoenix command interpreter. The Phoenix command interpreter was based on that of the Titan Multiple Access System which had inline input files and was in service from 1967.

Steve Bourne, who wrote the Bourne Shell for Unix, was at Cambridge in the 1960s and early 1970s. It seems likely that some of the Bourne Shell's constructs in Unix also derived from the Titan command interpreter.

GEC's OS4000 JCL was based on the Phoenix command interpreter.

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