All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

etc

darobin on 2003-02-14T09:53:42

Does anyone know why /etc is called thus on Unices?

No idea

Dom2 on 2003-02-14T11:54:39

But I would guess that it's just where the miscellaneous left over stuff went after /usr, /bin and /dev.

/etc used to be extremely sparsely populated. About 10 files on a fresh 7th Edition install. Have a look at a pdp11 emulator for more details.

-Dom

Re:No idea

darobin on 2003-02-14T12:04:36

I thought about that, but I have trouble buying it. It seems like a very poor choice :) Besides, it's not really miscellanous, there is some form of coherence there... perhaps though I'm getting that impression from having used unices for only five years.

The Burke Hypothesis

TorgoX on 2003-02-14T19:19:57

Just as "no plan ever survives contact with the enemy", no ontology (whether explicit or not) ever survives actual use without sprouting a de facto Etc/Misc classification.

I call that the Burke Hypothesis! File it next to the the Burke Conjecture. I.e., with the duct tape and the Shoe Glue, in the junk drawer.

Re:The Burke Hypothesis

darobin on 2003-02-17T10:28:12

Exercise left for the reader: why does CPAN not have a Util::*, Misc::*, or Etc::* top-level namespace?