[TUHS] Of flags and keyletters

[TUHS] Of flags and keyletters

[Dave Horsfall]

Just recollecting old memories: why did AT&T refer to "flags" as 
"keyletters" in its SysV documentation?  Some sort of denial of 
Ed5/6/7/BSD's very existence?

The one good they did was the TTY driver...

-- Dave, who used to work for a SysVile shop

[TUHS] Re: Of flags and keyletters

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Thursday, February 29th, 2024 at 9:21 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> Just recollecting old memories: why did AT&T refer to "flags" as
> "keyletters" in its SysV documentation? Some sort of denial of
> Ed5/6/7/BSD's very existence?
> 
> The one good they did was the TTY driver...
> 
> -- Dave, who used to work for a SysVile shop

Curious Dave if you have a particular piece of documentation in mind?  I'm mostly finding the term "keyletter" in SCCS manpages and pages related to the lp print system.  This nomenclature appears to go back as far as Release 4.0 of SCCS/PWB on February 18, 1977, it is also used throughout the PIB regarding this release.

Maybe a nomenclature practice by some of the USG/PWB-side folks that slowly crept in?  Fwiw I generally see command-line bits as "options" throughout much documentation, with flag and option being used quite interchangeably, I don't get many hits at all in the 1983 System V manpage sources for "keyletter".

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: Of flags and keyletters

[Dave Horsfall]

On Thu, 29 Feb 2024, segaloco via TUHS wrote:

> Curious Dave if you have a particular piece of documentation in mind?  
> I'm mostly finding the term "keyletter" in SCCS manpages and pages 
> related to the lp print system.  This nomenclature appears to go back as 
> far as Release 4.0 of SCCS/PWB on February 18, 1977, it is also used 
> throughout the PIB regarding this release.

You're right; it was SCCS, not SysV.  Dunno what I was thinking...

Thanks.

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: Of flags and keyletters

[G. Branden Robinson]

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At 2024-03-01T04:21:44+1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Just recollecting old memories: why did AT&T refer to "flags" as
> "keyletters" in its SysV documentation?  Some sort of denial of
> Ed5/6/7/BSD's very existence?

Not exactly the same thing, but Lesk used the term to characterize the
format specifiers in the Seventh Edition Volume 2 paper on tbl(1).

Regards,
Branden

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[TUHS] Of flags and keyletters

[Douglas McIlroy]

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> 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.

Doug

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