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Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bconnex.net!news2.insinc.net!thinkage.on.ca!atbowler From: atbowler@thinkage.on.ca (Alan Bowler) Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Message-ID: <E0tKw8.12y@thinkage.on.ca> Sender: news@thinkage.on.ca Organization: Thinkage Ltd. References: <E0L92J.4tM@world.std.com> <kbibb.847601696@shellx> <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]> Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 17:36:08 GMT Lines: 18 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26357 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1484 alt.folklore.computers:124525 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. 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. > Multics commands generally had two names, a long verbose name that described the function and a short abbreviation that you could type in a reasonable amount of time. People of course only remembered the abbreviations that they actually used. Many of the Unix commands are about the same name as the Multics abbreviations.