*BSD News Article 82693


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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>
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> 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