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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Python (Re: iso646.h)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:35:39 -0800
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kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) writes:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On Tue, 23 Jan 2024 19:32:26 -0000 (UTC), Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:
>> 
>>> Dennis Ritchie has said that he regretted the spelling of creat(2)
>>> function. Presumably the abbreviation was supposed to save one byte of
>>> storage.
>> 
>> Given that, in POSIX, all the functions of creat(2) have been subsumed 
>> under open(2) anyway, we can largely ignore that.
>
> I know. creat() is now completely redundant because
> open() suffices. The reason I brought it up was just
> so that people would realize that at least sometimes
> it was a matter of saving storage space - even one
> byte.

I don't believe it was ever about storage space.

Early UNIX systems used ASR-33 teletypes for interactive I/O.  The
keyboard required a lot more physical force than modern keyboards do,
which made names like "mv" and "rm" easier to type than, say "rename"
and "delete".  (And it's turned out that the terse names aren't much of
a problem.  It would be easy to set up aliases with more verbose names,
but few if any people bother to do so.)

Some function names were limited to 6 characters by linker limitations,
but that doesn't explain "creat", which was just a poor choice.

[...]

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Medtronic
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */