Re: Not a typewriter

Horst von Brand
2001-05-14T01:04:31Z

"Mike A. Harris" <mharris@opensourceadvocate.org> said:
> On Fri, 11 May 2001 Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

[...]

> >why creat doesn't end in an "e;" and so forth. I tell the

The old C compiler/old Unix linker guaranteed 6 chars in an external symbol
name only, and C functions got an underscore prepended: _creat. I guess
this is the reason for this wart. As to why 6 chars only, I'd guess some
data structure in the linker was laid out that way. Machines had a few
dozen Kbs of RAM then, space was precious.

> What is the reason for that? Also wondered why it is resolv.conf
> and not resolve.conf or resolver.conf...

Old FS handled only 14 chars in names, but that clearly isn't the reason
here (11 chars). Some other operating system perhaps?

> Were they afraid that "e" being the most widely used letter in
> the English language was going to war out thir xpnsiv kyboards if
> thy usd it all th tim?

Funny conspiracy suscpicion, that... ;-)
--
Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616