[sf-lug] rc, ...

Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu
Wed Aug 2 20:46:15 PDT 2017


Well, yes, good point, they may have made it quite
intentionally/conveniently come out as rc, as to be that reminder
of the relatively similar reasonably related concept ... after all,
yes, configuration files in both cases - so they do have at least
that in common (but where and named what ... and directories, etc. -
that's another matter).

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] ENVVAR1=set_it_to [...] command [args ...]; rc, ...
> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 20:34:21 -0700

> Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):
>
>> Ah, context, context.  I could see where the confusion could easily arise.
>> rc, as in .bashrc, .initrc, etc. that old "rc" convention came from
>> "run command"
>
> Yeah, in Unix proto-history, it was indeed 'run commandS' (plural), not 'run
> control' (nor 'run command'.  ;->).   It's  been a long time.
> Apparently, the concept was swiped from the 'runcom' facility in MIT's
> CTCS around 1965.  And, for much of that history after 1965, it was
> actually more commonly called 'run control'.
>
>> The "rc" seen in dpkg -l means something rather different, actually.
>
> So _they_ say.
>
> I'm sorry, but when a major Unix-family distribution ends up defining
> configuration files as 'rc' files, and they say it has absolutely
> nothing, nosiree-bob, to do with the historic rc files but rather stands
> for remove = r+ conffiles = c, my answer is 'Sure, uh huh.  If you say
> so.'  And back away slowly.




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