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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!news.acsu.buffalo.edu!dsinc!newsfeed.pitt.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!cam-news-feed3.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!main.Germany.EU.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!interface-business.de!usenet From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: 18 Nov 1996 16:36:41 GMT Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden Lines: 20 Message-ID: <56q3ap$8db@innocence.interface-business.de> References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <560146$t9c@mail1.wg.waii.com> <E0L92J.4tM@world.std.com> <kbibb.847601696@shellx> <1996111206190712643@[192.159.32.2]> <569rkk$gv0@orac.mon.rnb.com> <1996111212371894551@[192.159.32.153]> <56depe$gcr@troma.rv.tis.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: ida.interface-business.de X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-31809-14 X-Fax: +49-351-3361187 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26531 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1559 alt.folklore.computers:124866 mark@troma.rv.tis.com (Mark Sienkiewicz) wrote: > 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). Radix-50, meaning you could encode octal 50 == decimal 40 different characters in one digit: 26 letters, 10 decimal digits, dollar, dot, underscore and space, IIRC. I think two thirds of the RSX-11 names were encoded R50... That's also why RSX-11 command names were three letters. -- J"org Wunsch Unix support engineer joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de http://www.interface-business.de/~j