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

[Andrew W. Gaunt]

Back in the early days of computers there weren't
as many characters to go around and folks had to 
be very conservative with their use. Since then, more
have been pulled out of the ground so we can use
them more liberally.

-- 
____    __
 | 0|___||.  Andrew Gaunt *nix Sys. Admin., etc.
_| _| : : }  quantum at lucent.com - http://www-cde.mv.lucent.com/~quantum
 -(O)-==-o\  andrew at gaunt.org - http://www.gaunt.org

pll at lanminds.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 16:43:36 EDT
> bscott at ntisys.com said:
> 
> >  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.
> 
> Okay, I'll buy that, but why create a linker that only supports 5
> character function names? What was it which caused this scenario?
> I guess I don't fully understand the role of linkers, if this should
> be an obvious thing :)
> --
> 
> Seeya,
> Paul
> --
>         It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
>    but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
> 
>          If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
> 
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