What is the origin of the UNIX $ (dollar) prompt?
Problem
The UNIX prompt uses a symbol to indicate that your input is expected. I was wondering why this symbol was chosen—if there is a reason. Dollar just seems a little unexpected. A symbol would have been more suggestive in my opinion.
Error Output
$
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1 Fix
Fix for: What is the origin of the UNIX $ (dollar) prompt?
Let's explore a little: Version 8 Unix is easy. There's still man pages available. Get to the sh man page and search for prompt. You'll get to a point where you read: PS1 Primary prompt string, by default “$ ”. PS2 Secondary prompt string, by default “> ”. So let's see if that was the first. Version 7 Unix man pages are still available, and the man page gives the same description of prompts as Version 8. What about version 6? Version 6 Unix wasn't hard to track. But its man page doesn't mention…
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