From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 1514 invoked from network); 21 Jun 2020 22:41:17 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 21 Jun 2020 22:41:17 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 6D0479C1D7; Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:41:13 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6ECF79C1AD; Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:40:23 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 4DBD79C1AD; Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:40:20 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mercury.lcs.mit.edu (mercury.lcs.mit.edu [18.26.0.122]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D1F879C1AC for ; Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:40:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11178) id DBFFA18C09A; Sun, 21 Jun 2020 18:40:18 -0400 (EDT) To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Message-Id: <20200621224018.DBFFA18C09A@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 18:40:18 -0400 (EDT) From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Origins and life of the pg pager X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" > From: Michael Siegel > there's no need to write out "less" every time. You can just alias that > to "pg" without causing any harm and save two letters, which is an > improvement for a task that is performed manually rather often. It always surpised me that there wasn't more of this - abbreviating the names of the most-used commands, to minimize typing - or more specifically, run-length encoding them based on how frequently they were used, with the most-used ones given the shortest names. The MIT-DSSR PWB1 system had a pager called just 'p' (source here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/p.c if anyone wants to see it; the man page is dated Apr/77); and 'ls' was tweaked to recognize the command name 'l' as an alias for 'ls -ls'. Of course, aliases didn't exist in the shell back then, which was why the command had to be coded to recognize the short form, and act differently. (And /bin/l was linked to /bin/ls.) 'l' and 'p' are _still_ aliased in my shell,to this day! > I hope it's okay that I chose to reply just to the list address and take > all the other addresses out. 'That's not a bug, that's a feature!' I always delete other addresses when replying to a list, unless I think someone might not be subscribed to that list. Noel