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Define - /etc?

Posted by Cliff on from the place-where-config-files-go dept.

ogar572 asks: "There has been an ongoing and heated debate around the office concerning the definition of what /etc means on *nix operating systems. One side says "et cetera" per Wikipedia. Another side says it means 'extended tool chest' per this gnome mailing list entry or per this Norwegian article. Yet another side says neither, but he doesn't remember exactly what he heard in the past. All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it 'et cetera', but that 'extended tool chest' didn't sound right either. So, what does it really mean?"

6 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Not an acronym by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would /etc be an acronym when every other directory off root is an abreviation? /bin - binaries /boot - bootstrap files /dev - devices /home - user home directories /lib - libraries /mnt - temporary mounts /proc - processes /sbin - static binaries /tmp - temporary files /usr - user programs (not boot critical) /var - variable data

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  2. Re:Pronunciation? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The correct pronunciation is "et setera", since it is taken directly from Latin.


    In which, ironically, it is pronounced "et ketera" (stress on the "ke" and remember to roll the r). English has done really weird things to the pronounciation of Latin.

    Chris Mattern

  3. Re:Pronunciation? by ari_j · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, but they did write millions of lines of poetry, much of it with strict forms. If you read a million lines of C with lots of good comments, you'd figure out the syntax before you finished.

  4. Re:It means by Stealthey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As far as I recall, I used to call it et cetera too, but then I was corrected/flamed once, and was basically told that etc stands for, "everything configurable".

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    I am at loss with words...
  5. Re:Pronunciation? by mfnickster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > And yet we still do not know how they pronounced them because they wrote down their language
    > they did not speak it into a dictaphone. Et cetera is pronounced as the English-speaking world has decided,
    > not Latin pronunciation guessers.

    A lot of that pronunciation knowledge comes from how Latin works were translated into Greek. They used kappa to represent 'C' in transliterated Latin words.

      - MFN

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  6. Re:It means by shokk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We always pronounced it "slash et cee" since all your other recommendations are too damn long.

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