Why is the `puts` function called puts?

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I can find the function puts on most of all programming languages such C, Ruby, Python, etc and started to wonder why it is named puts.

I have tried to google with any possible key words but in vain.

Is there a history of the naming of puts?

I am pretty sure that s stands for string but "put string" doesn't make sense to me compared to print string.

Please let me know the right place to ask if this question doesn't belong to here, thank you!

1 Answers

It's important to recall C's origins as a very terse language. Thus, puts — the idea being that the parametric string is indeed being "put" somewhere (or "output," if that makes the convention a little clearer) — is quicker to type than print. Most of the languages that still use that function name for that feature are either built on C or were trying to cater to C coders.

Also, when C was first conceived, I suspect "printing" was very much reserved for the idea of a tractor-feed dot-matrix printer.

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