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Re: Synonym for binary file?

Subject: Re: Synonym for binary file?
From: Paul DuBois <paul -at- kitebird -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:47:52 -0600


At 12:19 -0700 3/8/03, John McDermott wrote:

From: Decker Wong-Godfrey <dfgodfrey -at- milmanco -dot- com>

Finally, although the /bin directory does, in fact stand for "binary," it is
not necessarily an accurate reflection of colloquial understanding. Because
/usr stands for UNIX System Resources, it doesn't necessarily mean that the
directory's name necessarily has anything to do with what people commonly
regard as system resources for the UNIX operating system (ask, and the
majority of people will say that it stands for "user").

In fact, making usr stand for UNIX System Resources is a retronym. As a 25+ year user of UNIX and UNIX-like systems, I can assure you that this is really a retronym and not the initial meaning. Actually /usr was where user files were stored. Had it actually stood for something, surely hier(7) [the manual describing the filesystem hierarchy] would have said so instead of saying things like "the majority of user programs..." or whatever.

If, indeed, you find a reference from Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson with that usr does stand for UNIX System Resources, I'll be quite surprised.

Me too. I don't recall ever having read anything to do with UNIX that
identified /usr as UNIX System Resources, not in the old Bell Labs
papers, or even in some of the papers that preceded them.


--john

--
John McDermott
Writer, Educator, Consultant
jjm -at- jkintl -dot- com http://www.jkintl.com
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Re: Synonym for binary file?: From: John McDermott

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