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Comment by skybrian

11 years ago

We're so used to the "man" command that I think it's hard to judge how it would sound if someone invented it today. There might very well be calls to rename it.

We're okay with it because we're used to it, it's from a different time, and it's far too late to change it now. Those aren't good excuses for a new project.

6 comments

skybrian

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miah_  11 years ago

The 'man' command is named that because its short for 'manual', it has nothing to do with 'men'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_pages

  • lowboy  11 years ago

    The etymology is inoffensive, but the term itself is still exclusionary by way of "man" also being a gendered term. We are (and should be) more cognisant of these issues these days.

    • noddingham  11 years ago

      No, you're wrong. "man" is the obvious abbreviation for "manual" when trying to reduce the number of characters used. Not once as a teenager learning unix shell commands did gender (or cultural stereotypes) enter my mind when using the 'man' command, but I guarantee it does when looking at the 'bro' command.

    • Shish2k  11 years ago

      If something is obviously not meant to be offensive, but by some coincidence it is, then we should be offended by it?

      One day I hope to live in a world where people judge text by what it means, not which particular squiggly patterns ended up on the screen...

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