02/21/82  LINUS Introduction

     Congratulations!   You  are  now  within  the  Logical Inquiry and
Update  System  (LINUS)  which is a powerful, yet easy to use, facility
for  accessing a Multics Relational Data Store (MRDS) data base.  LINUS
provides  a  complete  data  base  management capability including both
retrieval and update operations.

     By  default,  LINUS will prompt you whenever it expects input from
you.   If  you  are  at LINUS request level, the default prompt will be
"linus:".   If  you  are  at  LILA request level, the prompt will be an
arrow  (->).  Type "help set_mode" if you want to learn how to turn off
the prompting mode.

     There are many requests which you can make within LINUS.  Type "?"
for  a summary list of those requests.  Type "list_requests" for a list
of  those requests that will contain a brief explanation of each.  Type
"help  REQUEST_NAME" in order to obtain more detailed information about
a given request.


Builtin functions:

     Information on the LINUS builtin functions may be obtained by
typing "help builtin_functions"


Helpful hints:

     Knowledge  of  the  following  requests  will allow you to perform
simple retrievals from a data base:

     open, set_scope, lila, print, del_scope, close, quit.

     If  you type a dot (.), LINUS will let you know whether you are at
LINUS request level or within the LILA editor.

     It  is  possible to execute any Multics command line when at LINUS
request  level  by typing "execute command_line" or "e command_line" or
"..command_line".  The latter form is handled slightly differently than
the  first  two.   Type  "help  execute"  for  a  discussion  of  those
differences.


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Historical Background

This edition of the Multics software materials and documentation is provided and donated
to Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Group BULL including BULL HN Information Systems Inc. 
as a contribution to computer science knowledge.  
This donation is made also to give evidence of the common contributions of Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Bell Laboratories, General Electric, Honeywell Information Systems Inc., Honeywell BULL Inc., Groupe BULL
and BULL HN Information Systems Inc. to the development of this operating system. 
Multics development was initiated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project MAC (1963-1970),
renamed the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the mid 1970s, under the leadership
of Professor Fernando Jose Corbato. Users consider that Multics provided the best software architecture 
for managing computer hardware properly and for executing programs. Many subsequent operating systems 
incorporated Multics principles.
Multics was distributed in 1975 to 2000 by Group Bull in Europe , and in the U.S. by Bull HN Information Systems Inc., 
as successor in interest by change in name only to Honeywell Bull Inc. and Honeywell Information Systems Inc. .

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Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these programs and their documentation for any purpose and without
fee is hereby granted,provided that the below copyright notice and historical background appear in all copies
and that both the copyright notice and historical background and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that the names of MIT, HIS, BULL or BULL HN not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
to distribution of the programs without specific prior written permission.
    Copyright 1972 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Honeywell Information Systems Inc.
    Copyright 2006 by BULL HN Information Systems Inc.
    Copyright 2006 by Bull SAS
    All Rights Reserved