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> commands are self-explanatory with only one extra letter. They really aren't :) If you came across them outside of the context in which you learned them, th
by dmitriid 5y ago
> commands are self-explanatory with only one extra letter.
They really aren't :)
If you came across them outside of the context in which you learned them, they mean nothing.
Once you've learned them, only then do you know that they are contractions/abbreviations: ls is list, mv is move, cp is copy etc.
- Flankk 5y agoObviously a word without vowels is an abbreviation of sorts. The only context I had learning the shell was from using DOS. The equivalent would be DIR, MOVE, COPY, DEL. DOS sucked but I did enjoy playing Lemmings.
- dmitriid 5y agoWhen I moved to Linux from Windows I couldn't understand why the operations weren't actual words you could deduce and remember :) mv instead of move? why?! Now I have them internalised, so it's fine.
- TheMonarchist 5y agoUnix was created on a PDP-7. Two letters was generous considering that they had to use an electromechanical terminal. They also had only 4K words of store in the beginning so they wouldn't run out of meaningful shorthands.