"G. Branden Robinson" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

(A funny side note: subconsciously, I chose the name "fildes.7" as to
not go over eight characters; it came to me naturally after many years
of working with and on Unix-like systems, this archaic element simply
lodged itself into my instincts after some time.)

Eight's an odd choice for that, though.  As I understand it, the Fortran
linker that Unix originally used (C did not exist yet) had a limit of 6
characters for externally resolvable symbols, because that was all some
IBM operating system could handle.  File names (or "path name
components", if one insists) were limited to 14 characters until the
Berkeley "fast" file system.  The tuhs at tuhs dot org is a more
reliable resource than I can be here, though.

Heh, some confusion it seems.  No idea where I got eight from.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović