Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:56:20 -0600 From: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." <kdk@daleco.biz> To: Colin Percival <colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk> Cc: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Subject: Re: A bit of trivia: what does usr stand for? Message-ID: <3FE4E1A4.1080302@daleco.biz> 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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Colin Percival wrote: > At 18:04 20/12/2003 -0500, Bill Moran wrote: > >> Colin Percival wrote: >> > There's an urban myth floating around that it meant Unix System >> Resource. >> >>> According to denizens of afc, this is likely a backronym, since the >>> first >>> use of /usr/ was to store user's files. >> >> >> 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. ;) > > Colin Percival > UNIX is a tad famous for "lazy typists"; Ritchie has been quoted (I think) as saying Thompson had a grand penchant for brevity or sparseness. Could it be related to storage issues? Three chars and a slash isn't a biggie anymore, but back then, ?? Somebody smarter than me might know....
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