[TUHS] pronouncing *nix formulas (was: screen editors)

[Brantley Coile]

Did the NS32032 have a character? If so, what was it?

 Brantley

> On Feb 5, 2020, at 6:40 AM, Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Pretty sure q came first and was resurrected later. The system, applied rigorously, was to pick something that worked without conflict each time. Ken usually picked.
> 
> -rob
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 8:50 PM Angelo Papenhoff <aap at papnet.eu> wrote:
> On 05/02/20, Rob Pike wrote:
> > Also a side note about vi: Plan 9 had another program with that name.
> > http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/vi. The 'v' meant mips for obscure but
> > consistent reasons. Yet another reason the command was pronounced V.I.
> > regardless of its function.
> 
> Actually now i wonder, was there a system behind those characters?
> These are all i could find (roughly in order of appearance):
> 2 68020
> 8 i386
> v mips
> k sparc
> z hobbit
> 6 i960
> x AT&T 3210
> 1 68000
> 9 AMD 29000
> q ppc
> 7 alpha
> 5 ARM (7500)
> 6 amd64
> 9 ppc64
> 0 mips little endian
> 
> There's a '2' in '68020' and an '8' in '386' and maybe i can understand
> 'k' as sparK, but why is v mips or q powerpc?
> 
> aap