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Upon my journey to master Unix/Linux, I came across this saying and some of its derivaties:

Everything is a file.

or

Everything in Unix is a file.

Reflecting upon my humble knowledge of Unix/Linux, I think this phrase concisely defines a very foundational idea of the Unix/Linux system.

As such, I would like to use this quote in my up-coming presentation on Linux introduction. For that purpose, I need to know the history behind this quote with reference.

Tran Triet
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    Other operating systems have done the same (recalling it for IBM VM/SP CMS). The origin of this is probably debatable. – Thomas Dickey Sep 23 '18 at 08:45
  • I understand that it won't be easy to give a proper reference to the 'history' of this saying. However, since I would like to put this line as a quote in my presentation I need to know at least what the general community thinks the 'source' of this quote is (e.g. generally accepted first document or person that used this saying). – Tran Triet Sep 23 '18 at 08:53
  • The problem with questions like this is that it encourages others to provide their opinion rather than facts. – Thomas Dickey Sep 23 '18 at 08:57
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    history … with reference seems to be asking for documented facts. – JdeBP Sep 23 '18 at 09:02
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    Related questions are https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/141016/ and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/225537/ . – JdeBP Sep 23 '18 at 09:02
  • I understand your concern. I by no means want to go against the guideline of the community regarding appropriate questions. I thought if one can give a proper reference to justify his/her answer, it would become a fact rather than an opinion. However, do you think it is possible to edit this question to make it align more with the Unix&Linux stack guideline? Please help me with it. – Tran Triet Sep 23 '18 at 09:02
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    I don't know the origin of that exact quote, but any explanation of that quote probably references the 1974 CACM article on UNIX. – Mark Plotnick Sep 23 '18 at 14:00

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A case-insensitive Ngram search for "Everything is a file,Everything in Unix is a file" doesn't turn up much, but it does give a date to beat:

In iPcress everything is a file, including the indexed table of file headers (inode table). This is an extension of the UNIX philosophy that “all files are simply a stream of bytes".
- FILE SYSTEM DESIGN USING LARGE MEMORIES, Carl Staelin, Hector Garcia-Molina; CS-TR-246-90 February 1990 (Revised June 1990)

agc
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