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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!ultron.rnb.com!orac.mon.rnb.com!usenet From: hdavies@kzin.mon.rnb.com (Hugh J.E. Davies) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: 12 Nov 1996 12:47:16 GMT Organization: Republic National Bank of New York Lines: 25 Message-ID: <569rkk$gv0@orac.mon.rnb.com> References: <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]> Reply-To: hdavies@kzin.mon.rnb.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kzin.mon.rnb.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26304 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1475 alt.folklore.computers:124463 In article <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]>, swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com (Shawn Barnhart) writes: >> 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. 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. ---- Hugh J.E. Davies, AVP Unix Support, Newsmaster, Republic National Bank, 30 Monument Street, London. This is *NOT* an official publication of RNB.