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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.idt.net!mr.net!news.mr.net!swb From: swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com (Shawn Barnhart) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 06:19:07 -0600 Organization: Chaos Lines: 15 Message-ID: <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]> References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <560146$t9c@mail1.wg.waii.com> <E0L92J.4tM@world.std.com> <kbibb.847601696@shellx> NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.159.32.2 X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.2b3 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26302 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1474 alt.folklore.computers:124452 > In <E0L92J.4tM@world.std.com> dp@world.std.com (Jeff DelPapa) writes: > > >The biggest conclusion that you can draw from the oldest of unix > >commands, (cp,rm,ln,cmp, and directories like /tmp /usr) is that the > >original authors were vwl alrgc. I thought I read someplace that one of the original incarnations of Unix could only support two character file names. Hence many of the basic system commands (ls, mv, cp, rm, cd, and so forth) are only two characters. But I like the idea that it was attributed to the amount of effort to type the commands into a printing terminal. -- Shawn Barnhart swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com