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From: nowakp@hfsi.hfsi.com (Paul Nowak)
Subject: Re: Dumb Command Names (was Re: Retro-Computing!)
Message-ID: <1995Apr19.193328.13542@hfsi.hfsi.com>
Organization: HFSI
References: <D5yxwn.5BG@sdf.saomai.org> <D6oBJp.473@nntpa.cb.att.com> <3m9eta$6rd@spang.camosun.bc.ca> <D6tLJs.BM5@bonkers.taronga.com> <3mcqbi$nnm@ionews.io.org>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 19:33:28 GMT
Lines: 62

cbbrown@io.org (Christopher B. Browne) writes:

>In article <D6tLJs.BM5@bonkers.taronga.com>,
>Peter da Silva <peter@bonkers.taronga.com> wrote:
>>In article <3m9eta$6rd@spang.camosun.bc.ca>,
>>Deryk Barker <dbarker@camosun.bc.ca> wrote:
>>>As Ian Batten (I.G.Batten@fulcrum.co.uk) once said whilst still
>>>a humble undergraduate at Birmingham: the difference between Multics
>>>and UNix is that if you want to know how to print the contents of a
>>>file on your screen on Multics you type 'help print' on Unix you type
>>>'man cat'.
>>
>>If I wanted to view, list, or display the contents of a file on the screen
>>the last thing I would think of would be *print*.

>A nice name for a file viewer could also be something like "show."  
>"view," "list," and "display" are all reasonable substitutes.  "print" 
 
The command "list" was the old GCOS online display command. It was replaced
by "display" which had expanded capability.

>suggests rather a different operation to me; I certainly agree with
>Peter on this one.  "type" isn't as obvious, but isn't entirely
>stupid, unless we're talking about an object-oriented operating 
>system.

>I must admit that "pg" and "more" (and the punny version, "less") are
>not the most intuitive command names ever thought up for viewing files.

>I have to take some umbrage at the criticism of "cat."

>Three things:
>a) "cat" is a perfectly good way of shortening the name of what cat
>does, which is to *concatenate* together the contents of files.  While 
>brief, it is not overly disingenous.

So we should  think of file concatenation as a display function? On GCOS
(ObMultics::GCOS is a progenitor) file concatenation was accomplished by
listing all of the files to be concatenated separated by the semi-colon.
"Cat" seems more like an abbreviation of catalog.

>b) "cat" is not a particularly good way of displaying files that might
>be more than (say) 24 lines long.

>c) Some very silly manual writers have convinced people that "cat" is
>the best way of displaying the contents of files.  That isn't what it
>was meant for, and there are an unfortunate number of offending
>authors.

>Life might be better had either "pg" or "more" taken over.  (Although
>that might have left no room for the development of the dozens of
>subsequent file viewers.)
>-- 
>Christopher Browne - cbbrown@io.org
>In most of their applications, GUIs are primarily a tool that enables
>capitalists to exploit cheap, dispensable, unskilled labour - The GUI
>Manifesto
