Editing Peripheral Interchange Program (section)

==History==
It is said that during development it was named ATLATL, which is an acronym for "Anything, Lord to Anything, Lord."<ref>[http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/p/PIP.html PIP], ''The [[Jargon File]]''</ref>  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

 PIP destination←source /switches

using the left-arrow character from the [[ASCII]]-1963 character set that the [[Friden Flexowriter|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

 PIP destination=source

The [[underscore]] ([[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 [[DIGITAL Command Language|DCL]] commands, such as [[Directory (OpenVMS command)|DIRECTORY]] and [[ren (command)|RENAME]], by running [[RSX-11M]] PIP in compatibility mode. This usage of PIP was replaced by VAX-specific code in VAX/VMS 2.0,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/2.0/AA-D015C-TE_VAX_VMS_2.0_Release_Notes_198003.pdf|title=VAX/VMS Release Notes Version 2.0}}</ref> but PIP remained as part of the VAX-11 RSX layered product for VMS.<ref>{{cite web|url= https://manx-docs.org/collections/antonio/dec/aedl72cte.pdf|title=VAX-11 RSX Software Product Description}}</ref>

As late as the mid-1980s, PIP was still in common use on [[TOPS-10]], [[TOPS-20]] and [[PDP-11]] systems.