Yes. Memory and storage were at a very high premium until the 1990s, and when C was first being developed, it wasn’t uncommon for computers to output to printers (that’s why print() and co are named what they are), so every character was at a premium. In the latter case, you were literally paying in ink and paper by the character. These contributed to this convention that we’re still stuck with today in C.
IIRC older DOS versions were also limited to 8.3 filenames, so even filenames had a max limit of 8 characters + 3 extension. May it was a limitation of the file system, can’t quite remember.
At one point it was both. At one point they internally added support for longer file names in DOS, and then a later version of the filesystem also started supporting it. I think that on DOS and Windows (iirc even today), they never actually solved it, and paths on Windows and NTFS can only be 256 characters long in total or something (I don’t remember what the exact limit was/is).
Thanks for the insight! I think this kind of convention that once made some sense, is now exclusively harmful, but is still followed meticulously, is often called “tradition” and is one of the high speed engines that let humanity drive towards extinction.
I agree, and these conventions are being followed less over time. Since the 1990s, Windows world, Objective-C, and C++ have been migrating away (to mixed results), and even most embedded projects have been too. The main problem is that the standard library is already like that, and one of C’s biggest selling point is that you can still use source written >40 years ago, and interact with that. So just changing that, at that point just use Go or something. I also want to say, shoutout to GNU for being just so obstinate about changing nothing except for what they make evil about style. Gotta be one of my top 5 ‘why can’t you just be good leaders, GNU?’ moments.
They did, with core you could be paying for many dollars per bit of memory. They also often used teletypes, where you would pay in ink and time for every character.
I’ve heard arguments that back in ye old days each row only had 80 characters and variable names were shortened so you didn’t have to scroll the page back and forth
I’ve already felt like I should choose shorter names in a (shitty) project where the customer asked us to use an auto-formatter and a max line-width of 120 characters.
Because ultimately, I choose expressive variable names for readability. But an auto-formatter gladly fucks up your readability, breaking your line at some random ass point, unless your line does not need to be broken up.
And so you start negotiating whether you really need certain information in a variable name for the price of badly broken lines.
Yeah, I meant it as an example, where I was still granted relatively luxurious conditions, but even those already caused me to compromise on variable names.
I’d say, 95% of my lines of code do fit into 120 characters easily. It’s those 5% that pained me.
Seriously though, why? Is there historic reasons for that? Did they have to pay extra for more letters back in the day?
Yes. Memory and storage were at a very high premium until the 1990s, and when C was first being developed, it wasn’t uncommon for computers to output to printers (that’s why print() and co are named what they are), so every character was at a premium. In the latter case, you were literally paying in ink and paper by the character. These contributed to this convention that we’re still stuck with today in C.
IIRC older DOS versions were also limited to 8.3 filenames, so even filenames had a max limit of 8 characters + 3 extension. May it was a limitation of the file system, can’t quite remember.
At one point it was both. At one point they internally added support for longer file names in DOS, and then a later version of the filesystem also started supporting it. I think that on DOS and Windows (iirc even today), they never actually solved it, and paths on Windows and NTFS can only be 256 characters long in total or something (I don’t remember what the exact limit was/is).
It’s 256, unless you enable something in the registry. NTFS supports paths longer than 256, funnily enough.
Thanks for the insight! I think this kind of convention that once made some sense, is now exclusively harmful, but is still followed meticulously, is often called “tradition” and is one of the high speed engines that let humanity drive towards extinction.
I agree, and these conventions are being followed less over time. Since the 1990s, Windows world, Objective-C, and C++ have been migrating away (to mixed results), and even most embedded projects have been too. The main problem is that the standard library is already like that, and one of C’s biggest selling point is that you can still use source written >40 years ago, and interact with that. So just changing that, at that point just use Go or something. I also want to say, shoutout to GNU for being just so obstinate about changing nothing except for what they make evil about style. Gotta be one of my top 5 ‘why can’t you just be good leaders, GNU?’ moments.
*Rust (obviously!)
Wait, but they didn’t print out the source code right? Or did they use teletypes to develop?
Basically yeah. ed the editor was designed with that in mind
Oh, that makes a lot of sense then.
After all, it is the standard text editor
spoiler
uff, doesn’t feel right if it isn’t KasaneTeto saying this :/
I worked with a complier that would assume only compare the first 8 characters and would treat it the same afterwards.
Compiler copyright was around 1990.
Edit: This was for function names in C
Damn that must have been such a headache
They did, with core you could be paying for many dollars per bit of memory. They also often used teletypes, where you would pay in ink and time for every character.
Unix didn’t run on core though, did it? I thought core was before its time
A early models of PDP-11, the computer Unix was developed on, did use core.
I’ve heard arguments that back in ye old days each row only had 80 characters and variable names were shortened so you didn’t have to scroll the page back and forth
I’ve already felt like I should choose shorter names in a (shitty) project where the customer asked us to use an auto-formatter and a max line-width of 120 characters.
Because ultimately, I choose expressive variable names for readability. But an auto-formatter gladly fucks up your readability, breaking your line at some random ass point, unless your line does not need to be broken up.
And so you start negotiating whether you really need certain information in a variable name for the price of badly broken lines.
120 characters is quite much, though.
Yeah, I meant it as an example, where I was still granted relatively luxurious conditions, but even those already caused me to compromise on variable names.
I’d say, 95% of my lines of code do fit into 120 characters easily. It’s those 5% that pained me.
We were limited to a certain number of characters for filenames, way back in the Apple ]|[ days. IIRC it was 8