jwp (10/20/82)
I do not need an 'ls' to clutter my screen with files I normally never need to think about. I do not need "grep something *" to run through them as the general case. I can get both of those to happen if I DO need them. I also have a considerable number of very unsophisticated users on this system. They not only don't need to see them generally, in general I don't want them to (it only causes more confusion). Once they learn enough to need to deal with them, they find out about them. I'm not quite as opposed to collecting all personal configuration files in one subdirectory, though I don't see a real need (and assuming 'ls', '*', et al, continue to ignore names starting with '.'). I doubt strongly, however, that a generally acceptable name can be agreed upon (if I HAD to choose one, I'd pick "...").