Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 10:57:11 +1030 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." <kdk@daleco.biz> Cc: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Subject: Re: A bit of trivia: what does usr stand for? Message-ID: <20031221002711.GA4438@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3FE4E1A4.1080302@daleco.biz> 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> <3FE4E1A4.1080302@daleco.biz>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline On Saturday, 20 December 2003 at 17:56:20 -0600, Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. wrote: > 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. ;) > > 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.... I suspect you've never used a teletype. It's a pain to use, slow and clunky. Each keystroke is a separate effort. Under those circumstances, saving on input is an advantage. File names were 14 characters long, pretty much from the beginning, so I don't think it has anything to do with that. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers. --6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/5OjfIubykFB6QiMRAq/IAJ9DZIq7KD5IwUjfyyDI1JwPttkC/gCgoKjj B+nPvaMG8Zd6ZE4g9biCLfU= =kHoc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20031221002711.GA4438>