On Sat, 9 May 2026 at 22:15, Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> wrote:

> > Pádraig Brady wrote:
> >>    %%    %           a literal %
> >>    %a    Sun         locale's abbreviated weekday name

…

> >>    %Z     EDT        alphabetic time zone abbreviation
>
…

> Yes I suppose alphabetic is arbitrary.
> I.e. users generally want to know "what letter corresponds to <function>",
> not "what <function> corresponds to <letter> .".


“It's slower to search by function” could be considered a feature rather
than a bug.
An alphabetical list is a great aid to memorisation, as rapid confirmations
(*1) gives small dopamine hits, while the slower search for what you don't
know provides encouragement to do better next time.

-Martin

*1: locating a letter in an alphabetized vertical list takes only 2 or 3
secades (eye movements), far faster than locating a semantic description
among many lines of text.

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