Re: No more 8-character limit?

On 29/03/10 20:30, Yakov wrote:
> On Mar 29, 5:46 pm, Tony Mechelynck<antoine.mechely...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Even on later Windows systems, 8.3 names still exist because they are
>
> Are we going to rename vim to something like
> visualeditorcompatiblewithvi now ?
>
> I think the argument confuses two different things,
> (a) 8.3 limit of APIs or of filesystem, and
> (b) tendency of [unix] people to abbreviate filenames and variables
> *really short*.
>
> Beleive it or not, some people will abbreviate really short, no matter
> what's filename limit.
>

Hm, I think there's something in this argument. On Unix, long names have
been permitted since I don't know when, but what are the names used? ls
(not "directory_list": "list" would still be ambiguous), cat (not
"concat" and even less "concatenate"), mv (not "move" and even less
"rename"), cp (not "copy"), rm (not "remove" or "delete"), sed (not
"streamedit"), tar (not "tape_archiver" or even "archiver" for who uses
tapes nowadays, at least on Linux?), man (not "manual") and so on and so
forth. So Unix users have to commit to memory that, for instance, to
"rename" a file they must use the "mv" program. Now how can they
remember that? Yet they do.

On Dos/Windows, there are alias pairs: chdir = cd, mkdir = md, rmdir =
rd, del = erase, etc. So what do the overwhelming majority of the users
type in practice? Always the shorter member of the pair.

With Vim commands and options it is maybe less systematic; but after
some time, for the really much-used ones, the abbreviated name always
gets the upper hand: :e (not :edit), :w (not :write), :q (not :quit), :x
(not :exit), :au (not :autocmd), etc. For the options, which ones are
most used may vary somewhat from person to person, but when I'm typing
for myself I use gfn, enc, tenc, fenc, fencs, ff, ffs, imi, ..., even
though when I'm explaining I write about 'guifont', 'encoding',
'termencoding', 'fileencoding', 'fileencodings', 'fileformat',
'fileformats', 'iminsert', etc.

Best regards,
Tony.
--
"I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!"
-- Mary Lou Bax

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