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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 12:37:18 -0600
Organization: Chaos
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Hugh J.E. Davies <hdavies@kzin.mon.rnb.com> wrote:

>  swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com (Shawn Barnhart) writes:
> >I thought I read someplace that one of the original incarnations of Unix
> >could only support two character file names.
> 
> Err, no.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> And this is the accepted explaination.

Are there many other OS of Unix vintage that have as many two character
commands?  I can't remember the HP2000 we used in elementary school (ca
1976) having two character commands, but I do remember using clunky
teletypes on them.  Certainly when that machine was developed, there
were no more high speed video terminals in use than in the Unix
development time period.

-- 
Shawn Barnhart
swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com