Orphan: date=February 2009
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Orphan: date=February 2009
A FLAB is an abbreviation using four letters. It is an abbreviation of Four Letter ABbreviation. It extends the self-referential humour of the TLA (Three Letter Acronym). It is sometimes referred to as an ETLA (Extended Three Letter Acronym)
Description
In a world where every possible Three Letter Acronym has been registered as a .com, and almost every pronounceable one has many usages, there is lot more scope for a unique name and greater readability with four letters. Using only upper-case English letters, there are 264 = 456,976 possible four-letter abbreviations. If numbers, special characters, or case-sensitivity are allowed, many more FLABs are available.
FLABs are commonly used as codes within computer file formats and computer protocols where a compromise needs to be found between human readability and a fixed format. Many file formats such as TIFF and PNG use four-letter codes to identify the type of chunks. The developers of the Apple Macintosh operating system used four-letter abbreviations as type codes and creator codes. The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) introduced the idea of using four-letter abbeviations as codes for commands (e.g. HELO, QUIT).
In some of these contexts, the FLAB is called a FourCC (an abbreviation of Four Character Code) or OSType.
See also
- Three Letter Acronym
- List of acronyms and initialisms
- List of computing and IT abbreviations
- Four-character idiom
