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What is really discussion about ? It's obvious (P)athname of (W)orking (D)rectory is the ONLY meaningful abbreviation. It simply cannot be just Print Working
by lovelyviking 6y ago
What is really discussion about ? It's obvious
(P)athname of (W)orking (D)rectory is the ONLY meaningful abbreviation.
It simply cannot be just Print Working Directory
because there are many meaning of this. What to print about current directory exactly? The same goes for present or whatever ..
Manual states it precisely too about PATHNAME. Many commands print things, most of them do this ,
but we do not have pfind pgrep pls pcat etc ...
- tomrod 6y agoI was taught years ago it stood for present working directory.
- lovelyviking 6y agoIt can stand for whatever you wish actually, I think. )
- tomrod 6y agoIndeed! "pwd" is the command, regardless what the acronym stood for originally or what connotation we assign to it today.
- ben509 6y ago> but we do not have pfind pgrep pls pcat etc ... find, globally search regex and print, list, concatenate, change directory, make directory etc. are all commands. They all have some kind of imperative verb in there, so "print" fits that pattern.
- lovelyviking 6y agoIf I am not mistaken command sends to stdout which can be anything, so print doesn't fit there at all, while pathname still does. Print is used in a sence of some output, like all commands do. Functionality though is difined by WHAT it actually sends to the output, just as with other commands.
- IggleSniggle 6y agoI got the totally opposite take away from the article. It should be “pathname of working directory” but the Multics history pretty clearly points at “print working directory.” Some commands become embedded so deep in your muscle memory that you’re going to bring them along with you, even if it occurs to you that the name doesn’t make much sense in the present working environment.
- lovelyviking 6y ago>Multics history pretty clearly points at “print working directory.” It does, but it made sense in the context of Multics, it doesn't in the context of Unix/Linux. It only shows how unix was designed: "let's tweak a bit and see ... " not too impressive
- marcus_holmes 6y agoAre we arguing about what the etymology of the command is, or what it should stand for? TFA seems to be confused about this too. Yes, if we had to create a backronym for this, then Pathname of Working Directory makes the most sense (to me anyway). But, as others have said, that doesn't appear to be what it originally stood for.
- lovelyviking 6y agoWe are arguing about BS because author have never dreamed it will be used for anything other then literally "print" on paper. We are suggesting it was very intellectual choice and thus we should stick to this BS forever, just because 'guru' was using paper instead of display and didn't think about the future.
- vcxy 6y agoThe 'p' in 'grep' actually does mean print.
- lovelyviking 6y agook this one yes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfOnGZUZDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfOnGZUZDk so, does it make me incorrect in general idea? what about ls? echo?
- vcxy 6y agoIt happens that the p in pwd actually does historically mean print from multics, but honestly I just do not care about that, let the p mean whatever you want. My inner monologue will always be "present working directory" even though I think that option is totally silly, my brain is stuck with it now. I just thought I was offering an interesting fact about where "grep" comes from.
- andrewshadura 6y agoIt's obviously print, how could you arrive to your conclusion?
- lovelyviking 6y agobecause printing is not unique functionality of this command. Most of the commands do that.