Letters

The UNIX program "mail", not the mail client one would use by choice under most circumstances. However today I have the pleasure of using a Solaris box which seems to be filled only with legacy tools like original "vi", a "tail" where if you do "tail -f *" it only tails the first matching file and not all files.. but I digress.

$ mail
mail: Too many letters, overflowing letters concatenated

I mean ignoring the error itself and the disrespect which it forces me to show this program, look at the wording.

The error involves the word "letters", i.e. the program was written before the word "mail" was the standard word for internet mail.

P.S. I recently created a nerdy privacy-respecting tool called When Will I Run Out Of Money? It's available for free if you want to check it out.

This article is © Adrian Smith.
It was originally published on 16 Aug 2010
More on: Words & Language | Linux & UNIX