Why do "ls" in UNIX and "dir" in DOS have different names?

Posted by bizso09 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by bizso09
Published on 2011-11-06T16:20:30Z Indexed on 2012/06/11 16:43 UTC
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disk-operating-system

Why do they have different names for the same command, listing a directory? Surely, they could have talked to each other and agreed on one common name, such as for example cd which is the same for both unix and dos.

This decision to have different names has created many headaches for developers and users and also increased incompatibility between the two systems. Did they do it on purpose? Then how come "cd" is the same?

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