Diversity Caturday... Lol :)

More about Diversity Caturday... Lol :)

Well, squishies, plushies, and maybe furries :) Apparently it is okay to post a Diversity Saturday any time during the month, not just leading up to the first Saturday of the month. By the way, I seem to have misspelled "Diversity" -- must get a new kegpoard!
Anyway, I can now stop using my DiversityMidweek tag, and post geekful stuff here :)
Right, back to the point. What has this to do with CATs? Well it's actualmently yet another of my linguistic rants, wtf. Anyone spotted the difference between the Apple CAT command and the *nix CAT command? Well, to quote Mick my friend in Brighton, "they're nothing like each other". CAT under Kronos (the CDC timesharing operating system) was short for CATLIST, and Apple Computer similarly used CATALOG to display a directory of the current directory (or folder, as micro softies nowadays call it). On the other hand, Unix/Linux/etc. use CAT to conCATenate the contents of a file onto another file, or list it to the screen (like the MSDOS MORE or TYPE commands).
Other examples of incompatible computer keywords include FORMAT -- in Fortran a statement such as 100 FORMAT(I3, 10X, F5.2, 6HWOOYAY) tells Fortran to print an integer in 3 characters, 10 spaces, then a real number in 5 with two after the decimal point, then the string "WOOYAY". In MSDOS the FORMAT command deletes your floppy (or hard!) disk, and writes a new filesystem to it.
The CALL command in Fortran and PDP11 / 80x86 Assembler is a subroutine call (like a BASIC GOSUB), whereas in English (a language spoken by humans) "Call" coloquially means to phone, although I use it for all forms of human-human communication, as in "why don't you call http://tinyurl.com/sheilasys" or "Hey Janet, call Julia in from the garden and tell her to eat her dinner". Also see #idiolect :) And #sheila :) Ta-ta for now, back soon :)