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Peripheral Interchange Program
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Peripheral Interchange Program
Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP) was a utility to transfer files on and between devices on Digital Equipment Corporation's computers. It was first implemented on the PDP-6 architecture by Harrison "Dit" Morse early in the 1960s. It was subsequently implemented for DEC's operating systems for PDP-10, PDP-11, and PDP-8 architectures. In the 1970s and 1980s Digital Research implemented PIP on CP/M and MP/M.
It is said that during development it was named ATLATL, which is an acronym for "Anything, Lord, to Anything, Lord." This humorously described both its purpose as a device-independent file copying tool and the difficulties at the time of safely copying files between devices.
The original PIP syntax was
using the left-arrow character from the ASCII-1963 character set that the Flexowriter keyboards of the time used. As other terminals were introduced that used later versions of ASCII (without the left-arrow character), PIP allowed the syntax
The underscore (_) character, which was in the same ASCII character position that left-arrow had occupied, was still supported to separate the destination and source specifications.
Source and destination were file specification strings. These consisted of a device name, typically 2 characters for device type such as DK (disk), LP (line printer), MT (magnetic tape), etc. and a unit number from 0 to 7, a colon (:), filename and extension.
Copying was generally permitted between any file specification to any other where it made sense.
Early versions of VAX/VMS implemented certain DCL commands, such as DIRECTORY and RENAME, by running RSX-11M PIP in compatibility mode. This usage of PIP was replaced by VAX-specific code in VAX/VMS 2.0, but PIP remained as part of the VAX-11 RSX layered product for VMS.
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Peripheral Interchange Program AI simulator
(@Peripheral Interchange Program_simulator)
Peripheral Interchange Program
Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP) was a utility to transfer files on and between devices on Digital Equipment Corporation's computers. It was first implemented on the PDP-6 architecture by Harrison "Dit" Morse early in the 1960s. It was subsequently implemented for DEC's operating systems for PDP-10, PDP-11, and PDP-8 architectures. In the 1970s and 1980s Digital Research implemented PIP on CP/M and MP/M.
It is said that during development it was named ATLATL, which is an acronym for "Anything, Lord, to Anything, Lord." This humorously described both its purpose as a device-independent file copying tool and the difficulties at the time of safely copying files between devices.
The original PIP syntax was
using the left-arrow character from the ASCII-1963 character set that the Flexowriter keyboards of the time used. As other terminals were introduced that used later versions of ASCII (without the left-arrow character), PIP allowed the syntax
The underscore (_) character, which was in the same ASCII character position that left-arrow had occupied, was still supported to separate the destination and source specifications.
Source and destination were file specification strings. These consisted of a device name, typically 2 characters for device type such as DK (disk), LP (line printer), MT (magnetic tape), etc. and a unit number from 0 to 7, a colon (:), filename and extension.
Copying was generally permitted between any file specification to any other where it made sense.
Early versions of VAX/VMS implemented certain DCL commands, such as DIRECTORY and RENAME, by running RSX-11M PIP in compatibility mode. This usage of PIP was replaced by VAX-specific code in VAX/VMS 2.0, but PIP remained as part of the VAX-11 RSX layered product for VMS.