Eric Sandeen wrote:
I mean, "cat" is short for "concatenate" which some future concatenation utility may also wish to use. Not only is "concatenate" a very common word, "cat" is a very simple abbrevation which may clash with "catalog" or "categorize" - Shall we also change its name? Where does this stop?
In an attempt to derail this from getting out of hand... 'cat' is specified by POSIX. Things that implement POSIX-specified functionality have a clear exception to using "common" names, since they are REQUIRED to use such names in order to achieve their purpose (i.e. implementing the POSIX-specified utility).
Something else wanting to use 'cat' could do so iff it implemented POSIX cat, in which case were it to be accepted, it would need to use alternatives to coexist with GNU coreutils 'cat'. This, however, is not the same as the situation under discussion.
p.s. /usr/bin/the-utility-formerly-known-as-calendar does have a certain ring to it though I suppose.
$0.02: "bsdcal", calendar-ob", etc. -- Matthew Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies. -- "Nobody expects the traditional Bourne shell!"