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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: RE: UNIX NAME ABBREVIATIONS
Message-ID: <6706@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 20-Nov-87 15:13:10 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6706
Posted: Fri Nov 20 15:13:10 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Nov-87 15:08:28 EST
References: <10376@brl-adm.ARPA> <16550@topaz.rutgers.edu> <388@cogen.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 26

In article <388@cogen.UUCP> alen@cogen.UUCP (Alen Shapiro) writes:
>wot about "cat" (Concatenate And Type)

RONG:
cat	catenate

>				(not to be confused with the CAT phototypesetter)

Not even with the GSI (now Wang) C/A/T

>		  "roff" (short for RunOFF)
>		  "troff" (Typesetter RunOFF)

nroff	new roff (lots of "n*" names follow this model, e.g. nplot)
troff	typesetter roff

>		  "spool" (Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off Line)

I suspect this is revisionist acronym retrofitting.
In the good old days before UNIX, spooling was often accomplished by
tape intermediary, with the data quite literally spooled onto a reel.

>Anyone know the origins of "glob"? Is it just a short form for "GLOBal"?

Yes, old UNIX shells used a separate process whose executable was named
"glob" to perform "wildcard" expansion.