*BSD News Article 82789


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From: mark@troma.rv.tis.com (Mark Sienkiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Date: 13 Nov 1996 16:32:30 -0500
Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <56depe$gcr@troma.rv.tis.com>
References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]> <569rkk$gv0@orac.mon.rnb.com> <1996111212371894551@[192.159.32.153]>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26366 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1486 alt.folklore.computers:124532

In article <1996111212371894551@[192.159.32.153]>,
Shawn Barnhart <swb@mercury.campbell-mithun.com> wrote:
>
>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.

It used to be common to allow abbeviations of command names.  I
recall seeing this in RT-11, TOPS-10, RSTS, VMS, VM/CMS, CANDE,
and some HP thing (MPE?) to name a few.  You only had to type a
unique prefix of the command name, so if the command to copy a file
was "COPY", you could just type

	C FILE.1 FILE.2         (this was before lower case was invented :)

but it would break horribly when the next release of the OS came out
with a command named "COMPARE" and now you have to type

	COP FILE.1 FILE.2

The explicit explanation for this feature was to make it easier to type
commands.  

On Unix, you just type a program name to run it.  On some of these
other systems, there is a list of valid commands that the user can
type.  From the list, you can recognize unique abbreviations
pretty easily.  Of course, one of those is probably "RUN programname",
usually abbreviated "R".

It makes as much sense to give the programs shorter names as it
does to read all the file names on your path to determine unique
abbreviations.

You were also dealing with a mindset at the time that names had to
be short.  There were lots of things like the 6 character variable
names in FORTRAN, the 2 and 3 character mnemonics for machine
instructions, etc etc that made people tend to shorten names
automatically.  DEC even had a character set encoding that 
let you squeeze 3 characters into 2 bytes (thus the 3 characters
extension in file names).

I'd be surprised if this mindset isn't also part of it, at least 
subconciously.