WAITS was the timesharing operating system in use at the Stanford AI Laboratory from 1966 to 1991.

Files and directories

Like TOPS-10, files have a six-character name and a three-character extension. The file system is divided into directories named by project and programmer, three characters each. The default project is “1”, so the home directory for user “USR” would be [1,USR]. A fully specified path has the directory after the file name, e.g. FOOBAR.TXT[1,USR].

Survival Guide

Here a summary of useful commands for WAITS in comparison common UNIX commands.

Everywhere $ is written, it means typing Escape.

UNIX WAITS
login: user LOGIN 1,USR
logout KJOB
ls DIR
ls foo/bar DIR [BAR,FOO]
ls / DIR [1,1]
ls *.foo DIR *.FOO
more file TYPE FILE
cd foo/bar ALIAS BAR,FOO
CTRL-C CTRL-C