why is 'bcd' a game?

neilms

neilms

If you go to /usr/games, there is a 'game' called bcd. It even has a short manual page that says 'reformat input as punch cards or paper tape'. Apparently you give the program a string such as $bcd myname, and it displays that input at the top of a bunch of numbers.

I do not understand what this is about. Why is it a game? Is it historical? I know punch cards and paper tape are historical things in computing, but I fail to see the joke here.
 
Yes these are historical. And as hier(7) describes them they're not really games as one would expect, but rather "useful and semi-frivolous programs".
It's the engineers' special way of having fun :p
 
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