15 Sep
2024
15 Sep
'24
4:37 p.m.
Who created the "cat" command and did they
have the
word "catenate" or "concatenate" in their heads?
Ken Thompson wrote "cat" for the PDP-7, with "concatenate" in
mind. The cat(1) page in the v1 manual is titled, "concatenate (or
print) files". Only later did someone in Research--I don't know
who--remark on the existence of the shorter synonym. It was
deliberately adopted in v7, perhaps because it better mirrored
the command name.
But brevity is the defensible argument for "catenate", while
familiarity boosts "concatenate". It stll takes some conscious
effort for me to use the former, However, I sense sinister
vibes in "concatenate", driven by the phrase "concatenation
of events", which often is used to explain misfortune.
Doug
15 Sep
15 Sep
9:21 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a function of the tiny disk
and memory available? Or more a function of having a Teletype 33 for input?
Of course, it could simply be that 'cat' is more convenient than
'catenate'...
Rik
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 7:38 AM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Who created
the "cat" command and did they have the
word "catenate" or "concatenate" in their heads?
Ken Thompson wrote "cat" for the PDP-7, with "concatenate" in
mind. The cat(1) page in the v1 manual is titled, "concatenate (or
print) files". Only later did someone in Research--I don't know
who--remark on the existence of the shorter synonym. It was
deliberately adopted in v7, perhaps because it better mirrored
the command name.
But brevity is the defensible argument for "catenate", while
familiarity boosts "concatenate". It stll takes some conscious
effort for me to use the former, However, I sense sinister
vibes in "concatenate", driven by the phrase "concatenation
of events", which often is used to explain misfortune.
Doug
10:43 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Early on, here in Faraway Land, I was told Unix command naming rules were these:
however can’t recall seeing it written:
2-7 chars - ie. short + reserved single chars for personal use
lower case
non-dictionary words - allowing 3rd party software a clear run
Of course, “sort” fails those rules :)
BSD didn’t use those rules (backup & restore).
For non touch typists, shorter commands & keywords are helpful.
On 16 Sep 2024, at 05:21, Rik Farrow
<rik(a)rikfarrow.com> wrote:
Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a function of the tiny disk and memory
available? Or more a function of having a Teletype 33 for input? Of course, it could
simply be that 'cat' is more convenient than 'catenate'...
Rik
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
16 Sep
16 Sep
2:49 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Sorry, my 'eh?' was an ironic reference to the cryptic error messages from
ed.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 5:41 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
[ Undoing top-posting ]
On Sun, 15 Sep 2024, Marc Donner wrote:
What needs to be clarified?
-- Dave
BSD
didn’t use those rules (backup & restore).
dump/restor (no "e"), as I recall?
eh? 
29 Sep
29 Sep
2:49 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
I am sure that shorter shell commands and switches were helpful for
*anybody* typing on a clunky, electro-mechanical Teletype (former TM).
They were for me, even though I had learned some typing in school on
mechanical typewriters.
For the counter-example, I wonder if anyone ever tried to type very much
(verbose) DCL on VAX/VMS using a Teletype. :-)
- Aron
On 9/15/24 16:43, sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au wrote:
...
For non touch typists, shorter commands & keywords are helpful.
3:09 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 6:49 PM Aron Insinga <aki(a)insinga.com> wrote:
I am sure that shorter shell commands and switches
were helpful for
*anybody* typing on a clunky, electro-mechanical Teletype (former TM).
They were for me, even though I had learned some typing in school on
mechanical typewriters.
For the counter-example, I wonder if anyone ever tried to type very much
(verbose) DCL on VAX/VMS using a Teletype. :-)
Not a teletype... but I did on a DECwriter II. It was ok, but not as nice
as a crt
Warner
- Aron
On 9/15/24 16:43, sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au wrote:
...
For non touch typists, shorter commands & keywords are helpful.
30 Sep
30 Sep
6:05 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Sat, Sep 28, 2024 at 8:49 PM Aron Insinga <aki(a)insinga.com> wrote:
For the counter-example, I wonder if anyone ever tried
to type very much
(verbose) DCL on VAX/VMS using a Teletype. :-)
I had occasion to use an ASR model 33 Teletype with VAX/VMS. Hated it.
The
DECwriter LA36 was acceptable, though.
While DCL commands generally involved complete words, they could be
abbreviated to the smallest unique abbreviation. Thus one mostly typed DIR
instead of DIRECTORY. Command keywords also were be required to be unique
in the first 4 characters--the DCL parser ignored all but the first four.
characters. The engineers at DEC's Marlboro MA facility named one of their
networked machines TWINKIE so that to log into it they could type SET
HOSTESS TWINKIE.
The terse Unix command verb style can be a steep learning curve for
beginners. How is one supposed to know that you say 'ls' to get a
directory listing? And unfortunately man pages aren't very useful for
beginners because you have to know what the command verb is in order to
call up its man page. Unix lacks a place to ask questions such as "how do
I get a directory listing?".
-Paul W.
-Paul W.
On 9/15/24 16:43, sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au wrote:
...
For non touch typists, shorter commands & keywords are helpful.
8:07 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 30, 2024 at 1:22 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 28, 2024 at 8:49 PM Aron Insinga
<aki(a)insinga.com> wrote:
This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
But the other form of it, `man -k`, is reasonable. Plan 9 called the
similar thing, `lookman`.
- Dan C.
For the counter-example, I wonder if anyone ever
tried to type very much (verbose) DCL on VAX/VMS using a Teletype. :-)
I had occasion to use an ASR model 33 Teletype with VAX/VMS. Hated it. The
DECwriter LA36 was acceptable, though.
While DCL commands generally involved complete words, they could be abbreviated to the
smallest unique abbreviation. Thus one mostly typed DIR instead of DIRECTORY. Command
keywords also were be required to be unique in the first 4 characters--the DCL parser
ignored all but the first four. characters. The engineers at DEC's Marlboro MA
facility named one of their networked machines TWINKIE so that to log into it they could
type SET HOSTESS TWINKIE.
The terse Unix command verb style can be a steep learning curve for beginners. How is
one supposed to know that you say 'ls' to get a directory listing? And
unfortunately man pages aren't very useful for beginners because you have to know
what the command verb is in order to call up its man page. Unix lacks a place to ask
questions such as "how do I get a directory listing?". 
9:15 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of name.
-Henry
10 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 9/30/24 15:15, Henry Bent wrote:
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross
<crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of name.
I was one of the Berkeley grad students in the office with Bill Joy
around this time. I think the name probably come from the "apropos"
command in Emacs. That command is mentioned here:
https://worrydream.com/refs/Stallman_1979_-_EMACS,_The_Extensible,_Customiz…,
which is dated June 1979, but the Emacs command existed before that
date. The Berkeley source code is dated 1979:
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2BSD/src/apropos.c
I had used Emacs at MIT as an undergraduate. Bill would sometimes ask
me, "how do they do that in Emacs", or ITS, and then riff on a feature
and put it into vi or whatever. Whether I suggested an "apropos" Unix
command or someone wanted something like that, or I said, "sounds like
'apropos' in Emacs", I don't remember.
Dan H
10:11 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 16:01, Dan Halbert <halbert(a)halwitz.org> wrote:
On 9/30/24 15:15, Henry Bent wrote:
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That definitely tracks with an outlier I turned up in my search of sources,
an "apropos.doc" that appears on the CSRG DVD with the sources for CMU
Emacs. It's just a list of mappings from commands to keybindings, for
example:
...
delete-next-character ^D
delete-next-word ESC-D
delete-other-windows ^X1
delete-previous-character ^H
delete-previous-character RUBOUT
...
I'm not particularly an Emacs person, but it looks like it could be the
output from an "apropos" command, or perhaps the input to it.
-Henry
This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of name.
I was one of the Berkeley grad students in the office with Bill Joy around
this time. I think the name probably come from the "apropos" command in
Emacs. That command is mentioned here:
https://worrydream.com/refs/Stallman_1979_-_EMACS,_The_Extensible,_Customiz…,
which is dated June 1979, but the Emacs command existed before that date.
The Berkeley source code is dated 1979:
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2BSD/src/apropos.c
I had used Emacs at MIT as an undergraduate. Bill would sometimes ask me,
"how do they do that in Emacs", or ITS, and then riff on a feature and put
it into vi or whatever. Whether I suggested an "apropos" Unix command or
someone wanted something like that, or I said, "sounds like 'apropos' in
Emacs", I don't remember.
10:39 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 30, 2024 at 4:01 PM Dan Halbert <halbert(a)halwitz.org> wrote:
I was one of the Berkeley grad students in the office
with Bill Joy around
this time.
IIRC Dark curly hair, and I can not think of his name either.
I bet if I saw a picture, I could identify him. apropos(1) was a great
hack, but I always thought whoever came up with locate(1) really hit the
jackpot.
ᐧ
ᐧ
1 Oct
1 Oct
6:31 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Dan Halbert wrote:
I had used Emacs at MIT as an undergraduate. Bill
would sometimes ask
me, "how do they do that in Emacs", or ITS, and then riff on a feature
and put it into vi or whatever. Whether I suggested an "apropos" Unix
command or someone wanted something like that, or I said, "sounds like
'apropos' in Emacs", I don't remember.
I'm curious if you remember any other features that Bill might have
picked up from Emacs or ITS? From you or anyone else.
Another interesting example would be job control that was done by Jim
Kulp.
3:36 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 10/1/24 00:31, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
Dan Halbert wrote:
A lot of the vi visual-mode commands were inspired by emacs, like
forward/back words, sentences/statements, paragraphs/functions. I
specifically remember explaining the hierarchy of ctrl-f, meta-f,
ctrl-meta-f, etc., and then Bill went off and put in '{' and '}' and
similar commands. And the "yank" commands were named after ctrl-Y and
other "yank" commands in emacs. Those are on the 2BSD tape.
Earl Cohen did the "finger" command quite soon after our class of first
year grad students arrived at UCB. It's in 2BSD.
I did "more" really early (https://danhalbert.org/more.html) but my
very simple version did not get back into the sources, and the reworked
"more" that Eric Shienbrood did is in 3BSD but not 2BSD.
Dan
I had used Emacs at MIT as an undergraduate.
Bill would sometimes ask
me, "how do they do that in Emacs", or ITS, and then riff on a feature
and put it into vi or whatever. Whether I suggested an "apropos" Unix
command or someone wanted something like that, or I said, "sounds like
'apropos' in Emacs", I don't remember.
I'm curious if you remember any other features that Bill might have
picked up from Emacs or ITS? From you or anyone else.
Another interesting example would be job control that was done by Jim
Kulp.
30 Sep
30 Sep
10:51 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Henry Bent wrote in
<CAEdTPBeK4HOjuiqJPtpneqrDj0CF3=5=jv5aOPjYPBisDkPmyg(a)mail.gmail.com>:
|On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
|> This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
|> the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
|> listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
|> immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
|>
|
|Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
|4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
|source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of name.
"a pro position" maybe. (Having said that
#?0|kent:linux$ apropos 'directory list'
CURLOPT_DIRLISTONLY (3) - ask for names only in a directory listing
vs
#?0|kent:linux$ apropos 'list directory'
dir (1) - list directory contents
ls (1) - list directory contents
ls (1p) - list directory contents
vdir (1) - list directory contents
vs
#?0|kent:linux$ apropos -a list directory
chacl (1) - change the access control list of a file or directory
CURLOPT_DIRLISTONLY (3) - ask for names only in a directory listing
dir (1) - list directory contents
ls (1) - list directory contents
ls (1p) - list directory contents
vdir (1) - list directory contents
vs
#?0|kent:linux$ apropos -a directory list
..same..
needs a "pro user" from the start; AI would instead and
additionally clean your back i would assume.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
11:25 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 16:51, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen(a)sdaoden.eu> wrote:
Henry Bent wrote in
<CAEdTPBeK4HOjuiqJPtpneqrDj0CF3=5=jv5aOPjYPBisDkPmyg(a)mail.gmail.com>:
|On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
|> This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
|> the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
|> listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
|> immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
|>
|
|Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
|4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
|source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of
name.
"a pro position" maybe.
needs a "pro user" from the start; AI would instead and
additionally clean your back i would assume.
Well, I no longer have institutional access to the full Oxford English
Dictionary, but Merriam Webster is happy to provide an extended paragraph
(!) on the etymology:
--
*Apropos* wears its ancestry like a badge—or a beret. From the French
phrase *à propos*, meaning “to the purpose,” the word’s emphasis lands on
its last syllable, which ends in a silent “s”: \ap-ruh-POH. *Apropos*
typically functions as an adjective describing what is suitable or
appropriate (“an apropos comment”), or as a preposition (with or without
*of*) meaning “with regard to,” as in “apropos (of) the decision,
implementation will take some time.” The phrase “apropos of nothing”
suggests that something does not relate to a specified topic.
--
-Henry
1 Oct
1 Oct
12:38 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Henry Bent wrote in
<CAEdTPBcGoBDb-r4vkbnqueb397G99XFBthqNMb3h5DaZ0o+gyg(a)mail.gmail.com>:
|On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 16:51, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen(a)sdaoden.eu> wrote:
|> Henry Bent wrote in
|> <CAEdTPBeK4HOjuiqJPtpneqrDj0CF3=5=jv5aOPjYPBisDkPmyg(a)mail.gmail.com>:
|>|On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
|>|> This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
|>|> the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
|>|> listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
|>|> immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
|>|
|>|Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
|>|4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
|>|source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of
|> name.
|>
|> "a pro position" maybe.
|>
|> needs a "pro user" from the start; AI would instead and
|> additionally clean your back i would assume.
|
|Well, I no longer have institutional access to the full Oxford English
|Dictionary, but Merriam Webster is happy to provide an extended paragraph
|(!) on the etymology:
Oh! Apropos is known in Germany as a (*that*) word, too, also
commonly heard, even in the (upper) middle class, but sounding
like "apro-poh" here. Ef "Apropos -- have i already" etc etc.
I was "only leaving of the e of that creat", so to say.
(I am not looking at the online "Duden" because they now require
Javascript and tracking, if i recall correctly.)
|--
|*Apropos* wears its ancestry like a badge—or a beret. From the French
|phrase *à propos*, meaning “to the purpose,” the word’s emphasis lands on
|its last syllable, which ends in a silent “s”: \ap-ruh-POH. *Apropos*
|typically functions as an adjective describing what is suitable or
|appropriate (“an apropos comment”), or as a preposition (with or without
|*of*) meaning “with regard to,” as in “apropos (of) the decision,
|implementation will take some time.” The phrase “apropos of nothing”
|suggests that something does not relate to a specified topic.
|--
|
|-Henry
--End of <CAEdTPBcGoBDb-r4vkbnqueb397G99XFBthqNMb3h5DaZ0o+gyg(a)mail.gmail\
.com>
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
12:46 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Apropos of apropos: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=apropos
etymonline.com is my goto etymological dictionary site.
On Sep 30, 2024, at 2:25 PM, Henry Bent
<henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 16:51, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen(a)sdaoden.eu
<mailto:steffen@sdaoden.eu>> wrote:
Henry Bent wrote in
<CAEdTPBeK4HOjuiqJPtpneqrDj0CF3=5=jv5aOPjYPBisDkPmyg(a)mail.gmail.com
<mailto:jv5aOPjYPBisDkPmyg@mail.gmail.com>>:
|On Mon, 30 Sept 2024 at 14:08, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com
<mailto:crossd@gmail.com>> wrote:
|> This makes me wonder when the `apropos` command was introduced; surely
|> the name was also somewhat of an obscure joke ("what is apropos of
|> listing a directory?" is not exactly the phrase that springs
|> immediately to mind when wondering how to list a directory).
|>
|
|Looks like it was introduced in 2BSD, written by Bill Joy, though the
|4.4BSD manpage claims that it was introduced in 3BSD. Neither the BSD
|source nor manpage are particularly enlightening about the choice of name.
"a pro position" maybe.
needs a "pro user" from the start; AI would instead and
additionally clean your back i would assume.
Well, I no longer have institutional access to the full Oxford English Dictionary, but
Merriam Webster is happy to provide an extended paragraph (!) on the etymology:
--
Apropos wears its ancestry like a badge—or a beret. From the French phrase à propos,
meaning “to the purpose,” the word’s emphasis lands on its last syllable, which ends in a
silent “s”: \ap-ruh-POH. Apropos typically functions as an adjective describing what is
suitable or appropriate (“an apropos comment”), or as a preposition (with or without of)
meaning “with regard to,” as in “apropos (of) the decision, implementation will take some
time.” The phrase “apropos of nothing” suggests that something does not relate to a
specified topic.
--
-Henry 
17 Oct
17 Oct
10:08 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Catching up on the last month's worth of email....
At Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:05:52 -0400, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Re: On computerese
On Sat, Sep 28, 2024 at 8:49 PM Aron Insinga <aki(a)insinga.com> wrote:
The terse Unix command verb style can be a steep learning curve for
beginners. How is one supposed to know that you say 'ls' to get a
directory listing? And unfortunately man pages aren't very useful for
beginners because you have to know what the command verb is in order to
call up its man page. Unix lacks a place to ask questions such as "how do
I get a directory listing?".
Actually Unix has "always" (since 7th Edition at least) had a place to
ask such questions!
As a Unix beginner back in 1980, using 7th Edition, I was taught, right
from the beginning, to use the permuted index to find things, which is
essentially what BSD apropos(1) does. Of course anyone with even the
tiniest smattering of academic experience would expect to have an index
to use to find things, and for me taking this one step further with a
permuted index using the keywords from the one-line descriptions of
commands was a new and wonderful discovery. I think I had a printed
copy of the Unix permuted index, though I don't remember for sure.
You can find ls(1) in the 7th Edition permuted index in three places:
ls list contents of directory....... ls(1)
ls list contents of directory................... ls(1)
ls list contents of directory.. ls(1)
The manual page for ls(1) is unfortunately missing one useful keyword in
the short description and using one less meaningful keyword. Perhaps
the entry should have been more like:
ls \- list the files in a directory
Anyway folks in my first-year classes didn't need, or shouldn't have
needed, to use the index to find ls(1) because we were given printed
copies of the 7th Edition's "UNIX For Beginners Second Edition" by
BWK. Perhaps the permuted index was included in the package. We were
also using Multics, and had been given printed copies of a Multics new
user help document as well.
--
Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org>
Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>
10:17 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 10/17/24 1:08 PM, Greg A. Woods wrote:
Of course anyone with even the
tiniest smattering of academic experience would expect to have an index
to use to find things
I don't think this true any more for anyone younger than a college undergrad, is it?
18 Oct
18 Oct
11:39 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
At Thu, 17 Oct 2024 13:17:19 -0700, Al Kossow <aek(a)bitsavers.org> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Re: On computerese
On 10/17/24 1:08 PM, Greg A. Woods wrote:
Heh. Probably not.
--
Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org>
Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>
Of course anyone with even the
tiniest smattering of academic experience would expect to have an index
to use to find things
I don't think this true any more for anyone younger than a college
undergrad, is it?
17 Oct
17 Oct
10:37 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Oct 17, 2024, at 1:08 PM, Greg A. Woods <woods(a)robohack.ca> wrote:
I was taught, right
from the beginning, to use the permuted index to find things, which is
essentially what BSD apropos(1) does.
Unfortunately things are a bit more complicated now!
On freebsd:
$ apropos ls | wc
1761 11158 121413
$ apropos ls | tail -1
refchan.tcl86, refchan(n) - command handler API of reflected channels
Looks like it is matching "ls" in "channels". May be it should match
full words? You can get this effect today with a bit more work:
$ apropos '\<ls\>' | wc
9 187 1260
But who'd remember to do that?
And man pages themselves need some work:
$ apropos tcl_fsdata
Tcl_AllocStatBuf.tcl86, Tcl_FSAccess.tcl86, Tcl_FSChdir.tcl86,
Tcl_FSConvertToPathType.tcl86, Tcl_FSCopyDirectory.tcl86, Tcl_FSCopyFile.tcl86,
Tcl_FSCreateDirectory.tcl86, Tcl_FSData.tcl86, Tcl_FSDeleteFile.tcl86,
Tcl_FSEqualPaths.tcl86, Tcl_FSEvalFile.tcl86, Tcl_FSEvalFileEx.tcl86,
Tcl_FSFileAttrsGet.tcl86, Tcl_FSFileAttrsSet.tcl86, Tcl_FSFileAttrStrings.tcl86,
Tcl_FSFileSystemInfo.tcl86, Tcl_FSGetCwd.tcl86, Tcl_FSGetFileSystemForPath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSGetInternalRep.tcl86, Tcl_FSGetNativePath.tcl86, Tcl_FSGetNormalizedPath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSGetPathType.tcl86, Tcl_FSGetTranslatedPath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSGetTranslatedStringPath.tcl86, Tcl_FSJoinPath.tcl86, Tcl_FSJoinToPath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSLink.tcl86, Tcl_FSListVolumes.tcl86, Tcl_FSLoadFile.tcl86, Tcl_FSLstat.tcl86,
Tcl_FSMatchInDirectory.tcl86, Tcl_FSMountsChanged.tcl86, Tcl_FSNewNativePath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSOpenFileChannel.tcl86, Tcl_FSPathSeparator.tcl86, Tcl_FSRegister.tcl86,
Tcl_FSRemoveDirectory.tcl86, Tcl_FSRenameFile.tcl86, Tcl_FSSplitPath.tcl86,
Tcl_FSStat.tcl86, Tcl_FSUnloadFile.tcl86, Tcl_FSUnregister.tcl86, Tcl_FSUtime.tcl86,
Tcl_GetAccessTimeFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetBlocksFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetBlockSizeFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetChangeTimeFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetDeviceTypeFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetFSDeviceFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetFSInodeFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetGroupIdFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetLinkCountFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetModeFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetModificationTimeFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_GetSizeFromStat.tcl86,
Tcl_GetUserIdFromStat.tcl86, Tcl_FSRegister, Tcl_AllocStatBuf, Tcl_FSAccess, Tcl_FSChdir,
Tcl_FSConvertToPathType, Tcl_FSCopyDirectory, Tcl_FSCopyFile, Tcl_FSCreateDirectory,
Tcl_FSData, Tcl_FSDeleteFile, Tcl_FSEqualPaths, Tcl_FSEvalFile, Tcl_FSEvalFileEx,
Tcl_FSFileAttrsGet, Tcl_FSFileAttrsSet, Tcl_FSFileAttrStrings, Tcl_FSFileSystemInfo,
Tcl_FSGetCwd, Tcl_FSGetFileSystemForPath, Tcl_FSGetInternalRep, Tcl_FSGetNativePath,
Tcl_FSGetNormalizedPath, Tcl_FSGetPathType, Tcl_FSGetTranslatedPath,
Tcl_FSGetTranslatedStringPath, Tcl_FSJoinPath, Tcl_FSJoinToPath, Tcl_FSLink,
Tcl_FSListVolumes, Tcl_FSLoadFile, Tcl_FSLstat, Tcl_FSMatchInDirectory,
Tcl_FSMountsChanged, Tcl_FSNewNativePath, Tcl_FSOpenFileChannel, Tcl_FSPathSeparator,
Tcl_FSRemoveDirectory, Tcl_FSRenameFile, Tcl_FSSplitPath, Tcl_FSStat, Tcl_FSUnloadFile,
Tcl_FSUnregister, Tcl_FSUtime, Tcl_GetAccessTimeFromStat, Tcl_GetBlocksFromStat,
Tcl_GetBlockSizeFromStat, Tcl_GetChangeTimeFromStat, Tcl_GetDeviceTypeFromStat,
Tcl_GetFSDeviceFromStat, Tcl_GetFSInodeFromStat, Tcl_GetGroupIdFromStat,
Tcl_GetLinkCountFromStat, Tcl_GetModeFromStat, Tcl_GetModificationTimeFromStat,
Tcl_GetSizeFromStat, Tcl_GetUserIdFromStat(3) - procedures to interact with any
filesystem
$ apropos tcl_fsdata|wc
1 119 2679
One very long line!
Seems word search on unix for such things needs to be beefed up....
18 Oct
18 Oct
11:34 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
At Thu, 17 Oct 2024 13:37:35 -0700, Bakul Shah via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Re: On computerese
Unfortunately things are a bit more complicated now!
On freebsd:
$ apropos ls | wc 1761 11158 121413
Someone forgot the "word" part of "keyword" I guess (but see below --
nothing new here). The same brain-damage happens on NetBSD (where all
the manual page processing has had a rather obnoxious and unnecessary
overhaul, for lack of a better description).
BTW, the first keyword I might search for when looking to find something
that does what ls(1) does would probably be "list", or maybe "files",
but not "ls" itself obviously! (Thus my earlier complaint that
"files"
does not appear in the synopsis for ls(1).)
$ apropos '\<ls\>' | wc 9 187 1260
So it seems FreeBSD's apropos(1) now allows regular expressions for the
keyword argument!
On my rather stock plain FreeBSD machine there are only two lines output
for '\<ls\>', and searching for '\<list\>' generates only
27 lines, all
quite reasonable.
At least this support for REs is well documented, assuming one would
think to read the manual page for apropos(1) before using it, so knowing
to use the RE word delimiters isn't too much of a stretch:
... uses case-insensitive extended regular expression matching
over manual names and descriptions
Use of word delimiters are even shown in some of the examples given.
I still fail to see why the default isn't/wasn't to treat the keyword
argument as only matching a whole word (+/- any suffixes).
The new NetBSD implementation doesn't document what its arguments do,
though a quick experiment shows it doesn't parse regular expressions.
Sadly it doesn't handle its '-s' option properly either.
Seems word search on unix for such things needs to be
beefed
up....
Indeed, though "beefed down" might be the better direction.
It looks, on first glance, that the 4.4BSD apropos(1) was also very lax
in matching keywords as well:
Each word is considered separately and case of letters is
ignored. Words which are part of other words are considered;
when looking for “compile”, apropos will also list all instances
of “compiler”.
I think proper exclusion of normal word suffixes (and maybe prefixes)
would suffice for a reasonable definition of "word", but a quick glance
at the source suggests that's not what it does
Note that all of this mess is partially because the makewhatis.sh script
didn't make it into 4.4BSD (even though getNAME.c did), and furthermore
the ed(1) script in it won't work with modern BSD ed(1) implementations.
There was a makewhatis.sed script that is in 4.4BSD doesn't seem to do
anything useful with modern "nroff -man" output either. Sigh.
While looking up information about the different implementations I ran
across the following slightly amusing but mostly sad description of
ptx(1): <https://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName#coreutils>
ptx: an inscrutable abbreviation for a word-salad generator.
PermuTed indeXes were tortuous concordances for manual pages
back in the days before tools like apropos. The GNU version was
created in 1999 as some sort of exercise in medieval
reenactment.
There's an embedded link therein to a somewhat more sedate description
of the UNIX Reference Manual's permuted index:
https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch50_09.htm
--
Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org>
Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>
19 Oct
19 Oct
4:55 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Regarding use of apropos as a way to answer "How do I do X?"-type
questions, I've never had any joy with that. apropos has always returned
pages and pages of irrelevant information. Maybe the direct answer is in
there somewhere, but it's always been a needle-in-the-haystack situation
for me.
-Paul W.
5:03 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
I think as you move from OS to OS, there are basics. You seek those out.
The thing I miss is a terminal room. That's where I really learned.
You seek out the people who are the most productive and look over their
shoulder. The first time I saw Udi do !}fmt<CR> my head exploded. That's
been a vi mapping for decades.
On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 10:55:57AM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote:
Regarding use of apropos as a way to answer "How
do I do X?"-type
questions, I've never had any joy with that. apropos has always returned
pages and pages of irrelevant information. Maybe the direct answer is in
there somewhere, but it's always been a needle-in-the-haystack situation
for me.
-Paul W.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
6:59 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Yes, programming is often better when it's a more social enterprise. It's
funny. I liked having an office for times when I wanted to think, but when
I was batting an interesting issue or trying to remember something pretty
obscure, the terminal room was the best. I also began to slowly realize my
own knowledge base was improving when I was the one answering the question
when someone asked, " Hey, does anybody have a good way to ..."
ᐧ
On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 11:09 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I think as you move from OS to OS, there are basics.
You seek those out.
The thing I miss is a terminal room. That's where I really learned.
You seek out the people who are the most productive and look over their
shoulder. The first time I saw Udi do !}fmt<CR> my head exploded. That's
been a vi mapping for decades.
On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 10:55:57AM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote:
Regarding use of apropos as a way to answer
"How do I do X?"-type
questions, I've never had any joy with that. apropos has always returned
pages and pages of irrelevant information. Maybe the direct answer is in
there somewhere, but it's always been a needle-in-the-haystack situation
for me.
-Paul W.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
8:16 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Sat, 19 Oct 2024, Clem Cole wrote:
Yes, programming is often better when it's a more
social enterprise. It's
funny. I liked having an office for times when I wanted to think, but when
I was batting an interesting issue or trying to remember something pretty
obscure, the terminal room was the best. I also began to slowly realize my
own knowledge base was improving when I was the one answering the question
when someone asked, " Hey, does anybody have a good way to ..."
I notice I'm more motivated to work on a program when I'm not alone
slogging through it.
Of course a lot of my projects tend to fall into the "who cares?"
category. Like trying to backport MS-DOS 6.2 functionality to the
open-source 4, or create an alternate-universe OS where it was System V
rather than BSD that got the Theseus treatment...
-uso.
29 Sep
29 Sep
2:57 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
p.s. And I did use PDP-11 Unix on an upper-case-only ASR33 by typing
backslashes before all upper-case letters to keep them from being mapped
to lower case.
"Unix means never having to use the shift key."
(Except for those annoying all-upper-case macro names in C.)
- Aron
> On 16 Sep 2024, at 05:21, Rik Farrow
<rik(a)rikfarrow.com> wrote:
>
> Was the brevity typical of Unix command names a function of the tiny
> disk and memory available? Or more a function of having a Teletype 33
> for input? Of course, it could simply be that 'cat' is more
> convenient than 'catenate'...
>
> Rik
15 Sep
15 Sep
9:36 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
Before I got hooked on UNIX in 1977, I used a Univac Exec8 system.
You “cataloged” (created) a file with the @CAT command.
Other, file operations were done by the File Utility Routine/Program
Utility Routine: FURPUR
(sort of like pip on steroids).
I decided that if I ever got a CAT, it would be named FURPUR. That
happened when I was working for Rutgers. Not having any UNIVACs
around, the name escaped notice until the EE department hired a guy from
the University of Maryland who says “You have a cat named FURPUR?”
16 Sep
16 Sep
7:36 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Every computer geek knows his/her cat is the Computer Purry Furr-all ...
don't say you weren't warned! :)
Wesley Parish
On 16/09/24 07:36, Ron Natalie wrote:
Before I got hooked on UNIX in 1977, I used a Univac
Exec8 system.
You “cataloged” (created) a file with the @CAT command.
Other, file operations were done by the File Utility Routine/Program
Utility Routine: FURPUR
(sort of like pip on steroids).
I decided that if I ever got a CAT, it would be named FURPUR. That
happened when I was working for Rutgers. Not having any UNIVACs
around, the name escaped notice until the EE department hired a guy
from the University of Maryland who says “You have a cat named FURPUR?”
5:10 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
But brevity is the defensible argument for
"catenate", while
familiarity boosts "concatenate".
I suspect that only "highly educated east-coasters" are
familiar with "catenate." My education was pretty good,
but catenate, for all it's advantages of brevity and similar
age to "concatenate" is simply never used in modern-day
American English.
I'd never heard it until, like just about all the rest of
us, I came across it in the Unix manual.
My $.02,
Arnold
5:30 a.m.
New subject: On computerese
cat is capable of endless discussion.
cat thing | cat otherthing doesn't do what (some) people think.
cat thing | cat otherthing /dev/stdin does, but there's an ordering
point to be made.
cat thing | cat < otherthing /dev/stdin makes the ordering point. and
the number of lines seen.
the role of the shell in marshalling the IO and determining what is
opened, when, truncated is another pitfall that seems to escape
people. "I thought the commands ran left to right" when your first
command < something and your final command > something
like others, my use of cat is reflexive. I know perfectly well I could
solve the whole problem in awk or sed, I still construct sequences to
use sed to edit the lines, and awk to extract the fields in LSWP
denoted counts. we're speaking english and say "comme ci comme ca" and
nobody blinks, it's the same in shell. codeswitching!
12:41 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Monday, September 16, 2024, George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
cat is capable of endless discussion.
cat thing | cat otherthing doesn't do what (some) people think.
cat thing | cat otherthing /dev/stdin does, but there's an ordering
point to be made.
cat thing | cat < otherthing /dev/stdin makes the ordering point. and
the number of lines seen.
the role of the shell in marshalling the IO and determining what is
opened, when, truncated is another pitfall that seems to escape
people. "I thought the commands ran left to right" when your first
command < something and your final command > something
like others, my use of cat is reflexive. I know perfectly well I could
solve the whole problem in awk or sed, I still construct sequences to
use sed to edit the lines, and awk to extract the fields in LSWP
denoted counts. we're speaking english and say "comme ci comme ca" and
nobody blinks, it's the same in shell. codeswitching!
I have always admired one letter commands in ed(1) and during the years
constructed my own personal perfect Unix dictionary with most often used
commands as one letter abbreviations. For cat(1) I have always used 'c'
(cee) which also denotes one of its main functions.
Grep(1) is 'g', vi(1) is 'v', etc.
It makes typing a little faster, at least for me.
--Andy
12:59 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> writes:
cat is capable of endless discussion.
cat thing | cat otherthing doesn't do what (some) people think.
cat thing | cat otherthing /dev/stdin does, but there's an ordering
point to be made.
cat thing | cat < otherthing /dev/stdin makes the ordering point. and
the number of lines seen.
I'm not sure of the point you are making with your last example, which
gave me pause. I had to run it to see what it does.
I correctly guessed that only one of thing or otherthing would be printed,
but I was not able to guess if the | or the < would take precedence.
Is there a simple reason why the < has priority over | for the stdin ?
If the < precedence was your point, why did you specify /dev/stdin ?
cat thing | cat < otherthing
makes the point.
Is there a finer point I am missing ?
Sorry for being dense. I'm happy, after more that 20 years of Unixing,
to see something new even with such supposedly basic commands. Thank you
for your brain twister.
10:55 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 7:31 AM Edouard Klein <edouardklein(a)gmail.com> wrote:
George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> writes:
I suppose this depends entirely on the shell; perhaps that is the
point. Arguably, being the target of a pipe _and_ having a redirect on
stdin should be some kind of an error, but regardless, something that
is true is that is that the second `cat` command will only see
whatever is on `stdin` as it reads from `/dev/stdin`, but what is _on_
stdin can be confusing.
- Dan C.
cat is capable of endless discussion.
cat thing | cat otherthing doesn't do what (some) people think.
cat thing | cat otherthing /dev/stdin does, but there's an ordering
point to be made.
cat thing | cat < otherthing /dev/stdin makes the ordering point. and
the number of lines seen.
I'm not sure of the point you are making with your last example, which
gave me pause. I had to run it to see what it does.
I correctly guessed that only one of thing or otherthing would be printed,
but I was not able to guess if the | or the < would take precedence.
Is there a simple reason why the < has priority over | for the stdin ? If the < precedence was your point, why did you
specify /dev/stdin ?
cat thing | cat < otherthing
makes the point.
Is there a finer point I am missing ?
Sorry for being dense. I'm happy, after more that 20 years of Unixing,
to see something new even with such supposedly basic commands. Thank you
for your brain twister.
11:05 p.m.
New subject: On computerese
On 9/16/24 4:55 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
POSIX actually speaks on this:
"The standard input, standard output, or both of a command shall be
considered to be assigned by the pipeline before any redirection specified
by redirection operators that are part of the command"
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#t…
In the general case, this is how things like
program 2>&1 | collect_stdout_and_stderr
can work (file descriptor 1 is associated with the pipe before fd 2 is
redirected to it).
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
I correctly
guessed that only one of thing or otherthing would be printed,
but I was not able to guess if the | or the < would take precedence.
Is there a simple reason why the < has priority over | for the stdin ?
I suppose this depends entirely on the shell; perhaps that is the
point.
47
days inactive
81
days old
38 comments
26 participants
participants (26)
-
Al Kossow -
Andy Kosela -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Aron Insinga -
Bakul Shah -
Chet Ramey -
Clem Cole -
Dan Cross -
Dan Halbert -
Dave Horsfall -
Douglas McIlroy -
Edouard Klein -
George Michaelson -
Greg A. Woods -
Henry Bent -
Larry McVoy -
Lars Brinkhoff -
Marc Donner -
Paul Winalski -
Rik Farrow -
Ron Natalie -
sjenkin＠canb.auug.org.au -
Steffen Nurpmeso -
Steve Nickolas -
Warner Losh -
Wesley Parish