On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Derek D. Martin wrote:
>> But, on Unix systems, most things tend to be written in all lower case,
>> even when they are acronyms or proper nouns. This convention appears to
>> override "proper English" [1] in the vast majority of cases.
>
> That's certainly true of things like the names of programs and of
> function names. However, while there was this thing called BIND,
> there was never a program associated with that thing that had the name
> bind. BIND is not a program.
Ah, but even in that case, the name of the package is traditionally recorded
in lower case in the filesystem and source code. Examples include
apache/httpd, nfs/mountd/nfsd/statd/whatever, php/libphp, and so on. Or, for
that matter, linux/vmlinux!
unix uses lower case everywhere. ;-)
> I'd guess that it's still called BIND ...
Oh, I presume it is called BIND for the simple reason that is has always
been called that. And, really, that is a perfectly good reason, and one that
takes a fairly urgent need to overcome. (Witness the whole GNU/Linux debate.)
But this thread wasn't about why things are the way they are, it was about
what else they could be and why. (If it was about anything at all, which
admittedly is open to question...)
> And after all, reletively few well-established products ever change their
> names... right?
Right.
> I don't see anything overly logically inconsistent about the naming of
> named either; named serves names, just as timed serves time... :)
It is not inconsistent, it is overly general. nmbd serves names, too. As
do any number of other similar programs.
> The naming of Unix programs has never been exactly what one would call
> user-friendly.
This is very true.
> At least these somewhat indicate what the purpose of the program is!
Ditto.
> If you didn't already know, what would you guess that awk or dd did?
I wouldn't! :-)
> But why change it now?
I don't think anyone was really recommending a change, we were just griping
because we had nothing better to do. :-)
> And named is much easier to type than something "more intuitive" such as
> dns_name_server.
"domaind" works pretty well, and actually matches /etc/services, too.
> BTW, for those who are still actually reading this thread ...
Seems unlikely. ;-)
> ... Evi Nemeth's sysadmin bible[1] ... Unix System Administrator's
> Handbook ...
Now in its third edition, which covers Linux and FreeBSD! Whoo who! :-)
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Net Technologies, Inc. <http://www.ntisys.com>
Voice: (800)905-3049 x18 Fax: (978)499-7839
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