Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Not a typewriter | Date | Sun, 13 May 2001 21:03:30 -0400 | From | Horst von Brand <> |
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"Mike A. Harris" <mharris@opensourceadvocate.org> said: > On Fri, 11 May 2001 Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
[...]
> >why creat doesn't end in an "e;" and so forth. I tell the
The old C compiler/old Unix linker guaranteed 6 chars in an external symbol name only, and C functions got an underscore prepended: _creat. I guess this is the reason for this wart. As to why 6 chars only, I'd guess some data structure in the linker was laid out that way. Machines had a few dozen Kbs of RAM then, space was precious.
> What is the reason for that? Also wondered why it is resolv.conf > and not resolve.conf or resolver.conf...
Old FS handled only 14 chars in names, but that clearly isn't the reason here (11 chars). Some other operating system perhaps?
> Were they afraid that "e" being the most widely used letter in > the English language was going to war out thir xpnsiv kyboards if > thy usd it all th tim?
Funny conspiracy suscpicion, that... ;-) -- Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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