On Sat, Nov 30, 2024 at 11:22:24AM -0800, Evan Silberman wrote:
> Seems like the full history of DBM deserves some kind of lengthy
> academic tome, however:

Why only those files and not the others in libc/db/man/ ?

ndbm history should probably start with dbm/libdbm in v7.
ndbm was initially derived from that in 4.3BSD.

The 4.4BSD interfaces are normally called Berkeley DB.
And were not encumbered by AT&T licensing.

> 
> 
> diff /usr/src
> commit - 009b798eb105bd816df72071c0b273195535717e
> path + /usr/src
> blob - 87ed04cc20db1209f4157f06f0b16ce948424eff
> file + lib/libc/db/man/dbopen.3
> --- lib/libc/db/man/dbopen.3
> +++ lib/libc/db/man/dbopen.3
> @@ -525,6 +525,10 @@ for any of the errors specified for the library routin
>  .%J USENIX proceedings
>  .%D Winter 1992
>  .Re
> +.Sh HISTORY
> +.Nm
> +first appeared in
> +.Bx 4.4 .
>  .Sh BUGS
>  The typedef DBT is a mnemonic for
>  .Dq data base thang ,
> blob - 9cdaed326f5282ffaab8f995842eb8dfadc461a4
> file + lib/libc/db/man/ndbm.3
> --- lib/libc/db/man/ndbm.3
> +++ lib/libc/db/man/ndbm.3
> @@ -207,3 +207,12 @@ and corresponds to those errors described in
>  .Xr open 2 ,
>  .Xr dbopen 3 ,
>  .Xr hash 3
> +.Sh HISTORY
> +The
> +.Nm ndbm
> +interface first appeared in
> +.Bx 4.3
> +and became a compatibility wrapper for the
> +.Xr dbopen 3
> +interface in
> +.Bx 4.4 .
> 
>