Why is it "usr" in unix? They couldn't afford that one extra vowel?

[gopunk]

just a random thought...

 

[JetBlack69]

"e" is too expensive.

 

[XMan]

Cause they're l33t, that's why.

 

[ViRGE]

So that Apple could have a "users" folder in OS X, as another folder called "user" would confuse just about everyone.

 

[unclebabar]

when start life on a machine with say, 8 MB of total disk space, no you can't afford to buy another vowel.

 

[Slacker]

The day they finalized the alpha code the head programmer spilled his bosco on his keyboard taking out the "e" and a few other keys. hmm, surprised ya didnt know that

 

[Mucman]

I think unix people don't like the letter 'e'... why is it tmp, and not the temp directory?

 

[Slacker]

Blame it on the Bosco!

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: unclebabar
when start life on a machine with say, 8 MB of total disk space, no you can't afford to buy another vowel.

well that's what i was thinking... but then you have local.

 

[deftron]

Cause usir sounded weird and people would be gettin all

confused typing "You, sir" and stuff

Maybe they would just type "you" if you were a guy, too

 

[yakko]

Originally posted by: unclebabar
when start life on a machine with say, 8 MB of total disk space, no you can't afford to buy another vowel.

Disk? 8mb? What kind of advanced machine do you think they had.

 

[notfred]

then why'd they spell out home and not make it "hom"?

they could have just done "u", "b", "v", "r", "h", "e", "l", "t" if they really wanted to save space.....

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: notfred
then why'd they spell out home and not make it "hom"?

they could have just done "u", "b", "v", "r", "h", "e", "l", "t" if they really wanted to save space.....

The creators of UNIX were practical, not fools. The funny thing is how long it took Mickeysoft to come up with some of the same basic ideas.

For example, the home directory. Didn't exist in Win95. First appeared in WinNT in a retarded place:
C:\WINNT\Profiles

Eventually found its home in the totally lengthy directory:
C:\Documents and Settings

That's innovation for ya.

 

[Slacker]

The "home" directory was created before the Bosco incident.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Slacker
The "home" directory was created before the Bosco incident.

are you serious or kidding about this? i can't tell

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: unclebabar
when start life on a machine with say, 8 MB of total disk space, no you can't afford to buy another vowel.

well that's what i was thinking... but then you have local.

local was probably added later. I mean, before the internet, everything was local, thus making a "local" folder superfluous...

hehe

 

[Descartes]

Be confused no more.

 

[Crab cake]

They couldn't afford the extra "n" in umount either.

 

[Slacker]

 

[Electrode]

you must remember, they didn't have tab completion way back then, so they wanted to keep the ammount of keystrokes needed to perform common tasks to a minimum, while still making it make sense.

 

[IcemanJer]

Originally posted by: Descartes
Be confused no more.

whoa, nice link!

 

[unclebabar]

Disk? 8mb? What kind of advanced machine do you think they had.

I couldn't think of the specs for a PDP-11 at the time. But I don't think 8-10 MB was too much for a research lab in the 1970s.

 

[IcemanJer]

that would be memory, not disk storage space.
disk storage didn't exist back then.
data was either punched in with plastic cards, or fed in through one of those gigantic magnetic tape spools.

 

[unclebabar]

"The Unix operating system started on a cast-off DEC PDP-7 at Bell Laboratories in 1969" -preface Kernighan and Pike _The Unix Programing Environment_ 1984

Date of first hard drive according to http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/storage.html: 1956

 

[OutHouse]

why couldnt Microsoft keep the admin account SA?? They did in SQL