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Comment by burntsushi | Hacker News Reader

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up.

The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses.

"Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU

[1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

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> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up.

So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen?

* https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff

If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?

I honestly don't know. Which is... Not Great.

I know that if you want `fd` (https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) you need to `apt install fd-find` and which installs the binary `fdfind` (!).

Per Debian policy and precedence of the email notification utility, you'll install biff, the command-line email notification utility:

<https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-...>

<https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff>

It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.

That's... not terrible. Biff isn't exactly popular (yet?), so a name change isn't out of the question. Both of those names (and `biff`) are already taken on crates.io. Which is maybe not a huge problem. IDK. Naming is hard.

https://crates.io/search?q=bttf

// backronym bttf stands for biff time to format

I like this

also: back to the future

Burntsushi to the future

Intersting to notice that the name has been changed now when reading the post 12h late :-D

This is the fastest rebranding after a Show HN I think I’ve seen haha

You win the naming contest. The project has been renamed: https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14

@dang - Could you update the post title please to say "bttf" instead of "Biff"? Thank you!

I don't think @ tags have any effect on HN, you'll want to email the mods directly: hn@ycombinator.com

Naming is hard, sure, but doing some due diligence up front to see what's already being used isn't very difficult. Very neat tool.

I did. I always do. I just missed this one. Or if I saw it, it didn't register for me and felt like it was just an old archaic tool. Which... is probably still true, but I under-estimated its mindshare. Just an honest unknown unknown.

docbrown would be more appropriate, as the character who's actually doing the time manipulation.

As the author of a different project also named Biff, I do have to warn you that half the comments on your HN posts will be people quoting back to the future--though I haven't decided yet if that's annoying or an engagement hack!

[1] https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff

Back to the Future jokes never get old. I love it.

I still want one of those hover boards!

hellooo short-shorts

https://preview.redd.it/75ojrs5mzfcg1.jpeg?width=1024&auto=w...

> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine.

collisions, lol

  % apt-cache search biff
  biff - a mail notification tool
  gnubiff - mail notification program for GNOME (and others)
  wmbiff - Dockable app that displays information about mailboxes
  xlbiff - mail notification pop-up with configurable message scans

(along with 9 more matches without biff in command name)

Those are:

1. Not precise name collisions.

2. All mail-notification utilities, as was the original biff.

And since we're mentioning Debian, it has a policy requiring unique names within the Debian archive to be unique. Precedence goes to the earlier software packaged. Installed programs must also have unique names within a given system. The datetime Swiss army knife utility discussed here violates both policies.

As Debian policy is used both for Debian and derived distros (see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#De...> for a partial listing), it has considerable influence.

I've renamed the project to bttf :-)

That works on Debian ;-)

<https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=bttf>

Might want to ping the mods (hn@ycombinator.com) to update this submission title.

Edit: I'd typoed "bttf" as "btff" initially. Corrected shows partial but not exact matches on "libttfautohint1" and variants.

Griff is still available for future projects or Buford if you create a throwback project.

B1FF IS LIMITED TO 22 COLUMNZ

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