UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]

[Jerry Feldman]

I think you are correct. Create(2) is a system call. Linkage editors those 
days were rather primitive. I think the name limit was either 7 or 8, but 
external names in C were many times autoprefixed with __, such that creat 
became __creat.
The C language had a limit of 8 characters for a variable name (K&R 2.1). 
(Actually a name could be longer, but only the first 8 were significant). 
I think the only other programmer on this list who might have been writing 
C back then is my granduncle, Alex Hewitt ;-)

On 20 Aug 2002 at 16:43, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
>   I believe it was Ken Thompson, and I believe the remark was intended to be
> humorous.  Step back and ask: Why would he spell "create" as "creat" in the
> first place?  If you are going to type five characters, you might as well
> type six.  The reason it was spelled "creat" in the first place was the
> linked only supported five characters.  That has caused much
> head-scratching, question-asking, and recompiling-due-to-typos; hence the
> remark about the spelling.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
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