David Korn is a computer programmer, who is probably best known for creating the Korn shell, a command line shell interface/programming language for UNIX-like systems. The Korn shell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn (AT&T Bell Laboratories) in the mid 1980s. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...

David Korn received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from RPI in 1965 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1969. After working on computer simulations of transsonic air foils, he switched fields to computer science and became a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories in 1976. He developed Korn shell in response to problems he and his colleagues had with the most commonly used shells at the time, Bourne shell and C shell. Korn shell is backward-compatible with Bourne shell, but takes a lot of ideas from C shell, such as history viewing and vi-like command line editing. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a large university in Troy, New York, near Albany, founded in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer. ... 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ... New York University (NYU) is a large research university in New York City. ... The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (CIMS) is a division of New York University and serves as a centre for research and advanced training in computer science and mathematics. ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7, and replaced the Thompson shell, whose executable file had the same name, sh. ... The C shell (csh) is a Unix shell developed by Bill Joy for the BSD Unix system. ... Vi editing a temporary, empty file. ...

Korn shell and Microsoft

Due to Korn shell being one of the more popular shells written for the UNIX Operating System, Microsoft decided to include a version of it produced by Mortice Kern Systems in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT. This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1997. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was David Korn. Windows NT is an operating system produced by Microsoft. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Other software projects

Along with Korn shell, he is also known as the creator of UWIN, an X/Open library for Win32 systems, similar to Cygwin. Korn also developed sfio, a library for managing I/O streams. X/Open Company, Ltd. ... Windows API is a set of APIs, (application programming interfaces) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. ... Cygwin is a collection of free software tools originally developed by Cygnus Solutions to allow various versions of Microsoft Windows to act somewhat like a UNIX system. ... The initials SFIO can stand for: The French Section of the Workers International, the former French member of the Socialist International that merged into the French Socialist Party The Serious Fraud Investigation Office, an agency of the government of India (SFIO website) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid...

Korn became a Bell Labs fellow in 1984. He currently lives in New York City and works for AT&T Research in Florham Park, New Jersey. Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ... 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, and is at the center of international finance, politics, communications, music, fashion, and culture. ... Florham Park is a borough located in Morris County, New Jersey. ... State nickname: The Garden State Other U.S. States Capital Trenton Largest city Newark Governor Richard Codey (D) Official languages None defined Area 22,608 km² (47th)  - Land 19,231 km²  - Water 3,378 km² (14. ...

External links

• David Korn's home page on Kornshell.com
• Interview with David Korn on Slashdot, February 07, 2001
• A third party description of the Microsoft incident.