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by wantab 4087 days ago
In most cases, it's not cryptic or strange at all and makes perfect sense. This article ignores history. Back then, names were shortened to save every available byte cause ram and disk usage was so limited. It was also easier to type when you did everything from the command line. In addition, a lot of these were created in some lab somewhere, like Bell Labs, and they had no intention of you using it.

Long ago, when I heard of awk and sed, the first thing I did was ask what they stood for. I would think any seriously interested computer person would do the same thing.
2 comments
anyfoo 4087 days ago
In most cases, it's not cryptic or strange at all and makes perfect sense.

Just because it made sense and was entirely justified right then, does not mean that it is not cryptic or strange today. That's kind of the point of the explanations: to explain why the names are so cryptic and strange.

Long ago, when I heard of awk and sed, the first thing I did was ask what they stood for. I would think any seriously interested computer person would do the same thing.

Interesting expectation. I think why I always wondered, I did not really ask that often. Firstly because when I started, there were not many places to ask for (hardly any non-students even had Internet access), second because it would get tedious after a short time.

It's entirely justified for even very serious "computer persons" to have used these commands all the time and only now learning the meaning of some of them.

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wantab 4087 days ago
It makes sense today and isn't cryptic at all. Perhaps to outsiders it is but we're not outsiders. We know it stands for something and "stream editor" should make sense. Looking it up is a matter of "man sed" or, in my case long ago, I'd turn to the guy sitting next to me and ask him.

Yes, awk is an exception, and there are others, but they aren't the rule.

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smorrow 4087 days ago
When sed was new, the name wouldn't even have been considered cryptic: everybody already new ed.

Also: before sed there was gres. I'm not saying it's relevant, just that I've thought it would be better to have gres, and have it be the standard, than sed. (Match and substitution in actually-separate arguments.)

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