{"id":185,"date":"2007-05-06T23:33:17","date_gmt":"2007-05-06T21:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/05\/06\/why-rc\/"},"modified":"2007-05-06T23:33:17","modified_gmt":"2007-05-06T21:33:17","slug":"why-rc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/05\/06\/why-rc\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “rc”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I was playing with some unix boxen[1].
\nGoing back and forth between systems, I wrote many times \/usr\/local\/etc\/rc.d<\/code>, \/etc\/rc3.d<\/code>, \/etc\/rc.conf<\/code> and so on. As time passed, I felt more and more the urge to know: why “rc<\/code>“?<\/p>\n

Well, the first search in google pointed to a page of the University of Indiana<\/a>, which explained:
\n<\/p>\n

\nrc<\/strong>\truncom<\/code> (as in .cshrc<\/code> or \/etc\/rc<\/code>) <\/p>\n

The rc command derives from the runcom facility from the MIT CTSS system, ca. 1965.
\nFrom Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, as told to Vicki Brown: “There was a facility that would execute a bunch of commands stored in a file; it was called runcom<\/code> for “run commands”, and the file began to be called “a runcom”. rc<\/code> in Unix is a fossil from that usage.”<\/em>
\nNote: The name of the shell from the Plan 9 operating system is also rc.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a later search revealed, the text had been taken from a much more authoritative source: THE unix FAQ<\/a>, the collection of questions from comp.unix.questions<\/code> and comp.unix.shell<\/code>.
\nI find amusing that the Plan9 shell is called rc<\/code>.<\/p>\n

[1] before you correct me, from the jargon file<\/a>:
\nboxen<\/strong>: \/bok\u201a\u00c2\u00b4sn\/, pl.n.
\n[very common; by analogy with VAXen<\/em>] Fanciful plural of box<\/em> often encountered in the phrase ‘Unix boxen’, used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I was playing with some unix boxen[1]. Going back and forth between systems, I wrote many times \/usr\/local\/etc\/rc.d, \/etc\/rc3.d, \/etc\/rc.conf and so on. As time passed, I felt more and more the urge to know: why “rc“? Well, the first search in google pointed to a page of the University of Indiana, which explained:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kill-9.it\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}