[TUHS] On computerese

[Rob Pike]

For me the fascinating thing about dd is that people tended to use the JCL
notation for its arguments even after the Unix style was made available.
That is, people prefer "dd if=foo" rather than "dd -if foo" or even the
obviously easiest "dd <foo".

It's a counterargument to my understanding of why people prefer "cat foo |
cmd" to "cmd <foo" or "<foo cmd". There's a psych thesis in there somewhere.

-rob


On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 8:01 AM Peter Weinberger (温博格) via TUHS <
tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> i doubt there is a fully satisfactory answer. dd was a jab at IBM JCL.
> Several later commands were derived from earlier ones, like sed and
> tar. And awk ...
>
> I think the one that needs more explaining is grep. If brevity were
> the sole criterion, it could have been shorter.
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 5:49 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >     > From: Rik Farrow <rik at rikfarrow.com>
> >
> >     > Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a function of the
> tiny
> >     > disk and memory available? Or more a function of having a Teletype
> 33
> >     > for input?
> >
> > I'm not sure the answer was ever written down (e.g. in a memo); we will
> > probably have to rely on memory - and memories that far back are now
> fairly
> > thin on the ground by now. Perhaps Mr. McIlroy (or Mr. Thompson, if we're
> > _really_ lucky) will humor us? :-)
> >
> >
> > I have the impression that some of the names are _possibly_ inherited
> from
> > Multics (which the early Unicians all used before Unix existed) - but
> maybe
> > not. The command to list a directory, on Multics, is 'ls' (but see
> below) -
> > but the Multics qcommand to remove a file is 'del' (not 'rm'); and
> change working
> > directory is 'cwd'. So maybe ls' is just chance?
> >
> > Multics had a 'feature' where a segment (file) could have additional
> names (to
> > the main name), and this is used to add short aliases to many commands,
> so the
> > 'base name'' for the directory list command is 'list'; 'ls' is a short
> > alias. A list of Multics commands (with short forms) is available here:
> >
> >   https://www.multicians.org/multics-commands.html
> >
> > I'm not sure how early that alias mechanism came in, though; my copy of
> > "Introduction to Multics" (February, 1974) doesn't have short names (or,
> at
> > least, it doesn't use them).
> >
> >
> > It won't have anything to do with disk and memory. Having used a
> Teletype, it
> >  would take noticeably longer to type in a longer name! It's also more
> effort
> >  and time. I would expect those are the reasons for the short names.
> >
> >         Noel
>
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