1 Mar
2024
1 Mar
'24
4:56 p.m.
On Mar 1, 2024, at 7:49 AM, Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Use of "flag" for this purpose seems strange. "option" makes more
sense.
why did AT&T refer to "flags" as
"keyletters" in its SysV documentation?
Bureaucracies beget bureaucratese--polysyllabic obfuscation, witness APPLICATION USAGE in
place of BUGS.
One might argue that replacing "flag" by "option", thus doubling the
number of syllables, was a small step in that direction. In fact it was a deliberate
attempt to discard jargon in favor of normal English usage.