[JdeBP]

It did.

Foxley gives the manual procedure for sizing the lost+found directory on the aforementioned page 52.

I have the 1986 edition of Fielder's and Hunter's UNIX System Administration and it does not mention any such command in its discussion of lost+found in chapter 3. It references AT&T Unix System 5 Release 2 (or 'UNIX 5.2' as the book puts it).

But Google Books tells me that their later 1991 update, referencing Release 4 and with an updated title to match, does indeed mention mklost+found. So that looks like something that appeared in Release 3 or 4.

[Taniwha]

I used to port Unix for a living (V6 thru SysVr3) I know it was in Vr2, and I have a man page that says "(last mod. 1/15/87)" which would likely make it SysVr1 or earlier

[Taniwha]

(My guess is that it dates from the introduction of fsck which from memory was V7 or later)

[JdeBP]

My guess is that it was undocumented until Release 3 or 4, so the book authors simply never found out about it. Andrew Tanenbaum knew about it at the same time as the first Hunter and Fielding book, but likely this was word-of-mouth stuff.

* https://groups.google.com/g/comp.unix.wizards/c/bbCYhh7_r-8/...

Enjoy the obvious question asked about all this, way back in November 1981:

* https://groups.google.com/g/fa.unix-wizards/c/h5mFGIV91Io/m/...

That's the Dave Yost, still at RAND at the time, who went on to make the GRAND Editor.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43734536