Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 09:08:19 -0500 From: Marty Landman <MLandman@face2interface.com> To: Colin Percival <colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk>, Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>, Colin Percival <colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A bit of trivia: what does usr stand for? Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.0.20031221090242.07fbbd78@pop.face2interface.com> In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031220230641.02d15ec0@popserver.sfu.ca> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031220224013.02cf25c0@popserver.sfu.ca> <5.0.2.1.1.20031220224013.02cf25c0@popserver.sfu.ca> <5.0.2.1.1.20031220230641.02d15ec0@popserver.sfu.ca>
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At 06:08 PM 12/20/2003, Colin Percival wrote: >>The urban myth is believeable, though, since it seems silly to abbreviate >>"user" with "usr" ... I mean, you're only saving 1 letter. > > The same could be said about /tmp. I suspect it has less to do with >abbreviation, and more to do with someone having a broken "e" key on their >keyboard. ;) I like the broken 'e' key hypothesis, although given the first Unix developers were at Bell Labs I find it a little hard to believe; I worked at Bell Core once upon a time and faulty equipment like that was something I don't recall ever seeing. So I'll add a pet theory of my own [that just came to mind]. Being an old mainframe programmer I can attest to the fact that the last qualifier of a file name was conventionally made a 3 char filetype - e.g. asm, pli, obj, a convention still largely adhered to today. Maybe the original author of these main directories felt that using a 3 char name was in keeping with that convention. Marty Landman Face 2 Interface Inc 845-679-9387 Sign On Required: Web membership software for your site Make a Website: http://face2interface.com/Home/Demo.shtml
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