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The Wikipedia entry says p stands for print, as in print working directory. The man page implies it stands for pathname, as in pathname of working directory.
by ylyn 6y ago
The Wikipedia entry says p stands for print, as in print working directory.
The man page implies it stands for pathname, as in pathname of working directory.
- tovej 6y agoThe man page is ambiguous, two words beginning with p appear in the description. I personally trust the Multics etymology. The original developers of UNIX had worked on Multics after all. "pathname of working directory" is redundant, as is "process' working directory".
- croes 6y agoPathname of working directory isn't redunant. There are multiple attributes of the working directory like creation time, name, pathname, etc. Pathname is just one of them.
- tovej 6y agoIt is more specific to say "pathname of the working directory", you are right about that. What I meant was: It is redundant in the sense that the pathname is the identifier of the working directory, and if I ask someone to identify something I will receive in answer an identifier. I.e. If I were to ask a user at their computer "what is the current working directory?" and "what is the pathname of the current working directory?" I will get the same answer.
- lovelyviking 6y agoPathname there is the ONLY really useful word there, as it defines functionality exactly and filters out other meanings!
- OskarS 6y agoYeah, the Multics thing seems pretty definitive for me, it's clearly "print working directory". It also makes sense in context with the other basic UNIX commands: they're almost all actions or active verb phrases in some form. "Change directory", "list files, "touch", "concatenate", etc. It makes sense, because they're all programs you run that does stuff, they're not variables you read. So "pwd" as the active "print working directory" makes a lot more sense than the noun phrase "pathname of working directory", which sounds much more like a variable name, not a command name.
- lucideer 6y agoThe manpage says it "PRINTS the pathname of the WORKING (current) DIRECTORY"; I don't see any implication that either the word "print" or "pathname" make up any specific part of the acronym. Really the manpage doesn't specify either way. If I were to force any meaning from the manpage, I would tend to go with the 1st word in the sentence starting the acronym, but it's not so much ambiguous as it is just simply not saying anything at all. The original manpage doesn't give an etymology, so should be discarded as a source.
- lovelyviking 6y ago>The manpage says it "PRINTS the pathname of the WORKING (current) DIRECTORY" You could say the manpage says: "prints the PATHNAME of the WORKING (current) DIRECTORY" many commands "print" things, doesn't mean it part of the name >I don't see any implication How you do not see it? PATHNAME is the only thing that differentiate this command from others, many commands print things ... It's not simply a set of the words with equal weights. Some words there are more important and define the command, some can be interchanged like : "print" . You can use "displays", "sends to output" ... but you cannot change "pathname" without ruining the meaning. Should be obvious, for those who downvote, or simple logic doesn't work for some?
- Talanes 6y agoYour argument hinges on interpreting it exactly as YOU read it, while the grandparent argument only requires that multiple readings be possible. As multiple readings are demonstrably possible, your logic shows flaws. Historical fact is determined by examining sources for how the authors and other contemporary people interpret them, not applying your own snap judgements to them.
- lovelyviking 6y ago>Historical fact is determined ... Original article talks about MEANINGS of pwd. To determine meaning YOU imply that MEANING is defined ONLY by looking for historical fact, but it is how YOU interpret it. We can look for historical fact and find out that most of the commands literally printed on PAPER. So IF we talk about MEANINGs, we can take into account historical fact but there is no much use for it, if it doesn't represent the MEANING! There are no flaws in my logic. There are flows in your suggestion that we should discuss ONLY historical fact to determine MEANING. >while the grandparent argument only requires that multiple readings be possible while it does say about multiple readings possible, it uses caps used only in "PRINT" word. I merely pointed out to that imbalance by providing alternative, to ballance it back. Then I went further and argued that multiple readings are inappropriate there, because it is naive to put the same weight to the words. Some words are ESSENTIAL and some can be used for almost any command in unix/linux. Even grandparent argument discarded manual as source. and we simply -do-not-know- historical fact, So I CAN use manual as source of interpretations in search for !MEANING! not historical fact, which is absent and not very useful even if it will be determined. convinced ?
- 9dev 6y agoWhy is that in any way significant or even slightly useful information?