[SoftTalker]

One other historical reason for this (also the reason that older unix utilities tend to have such short names) is that people often interacted with unix machines over slow terminals or even paper teletypes. Typing "rm" instead of "remove" or "reboot" instead of "systemctl --reboot" was legitimately more convenient.

[Arch-TK]

I mean, it's still more convenient to type `rm` rather than `Remove-Item` when doing day-to-day computer tasks on your computer (yes I'm one of those people who lives in a terminal).

It's also certainly better from a readability standpoint to have `Remove-Item` rather than `rm` in a script.

Likewise, I would much rather type `ls -Al` rather than `ls --almost-all --long-listing` (N.B. --long-listing is not the long option for -l, -l has no long option, I just made up an appropriate name) when listing a directory but would probably appreciate the long form in a script.

I think just like we have long options and short options, it would be helpful to have long commands and short commands.

[im3w1l]

The best name from a readability standpoint is the shortest name you know by heart. So you might actually want to consider who your intended audience is.

[account42]

Exactly. Any for many commands you need to actually know what the command is doing to fully understand it and can't just go by intuition based on the name. So something more natural sounding can actually be more misleading because it tricks you into thinking the name describes the entirety of what the command does.

[ForOldHack]

As someone who started on ASR-33s. I have empathy for Mr Ritchie and Mr Kernigan.

After all, its 50% faster to type a two letter acronym, than a TLA.

https://media.wired.com/photos/59327efdf682204f73696446/mast...

/e