[TUHS] etymology of cron

[Marc Rochkind]

To update this thread:

The wording from my last edit to the Wikipedia article on cron is still
there, although one of the references has been removed, and the phrase
"better source needed" has been added. That part is OK with me, and I
actually agree with it--a better source *is* needed.

But at least the article at this point no longer says that cron is an
acronym.

[To Greg Lehey: As anyone can edit the article, you could could add a
paragraph about bogus claims as to what cron means if you want, but, in my
opinion, the article is better without this distracting discussion.]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 25 December 2015 at 10:41:54 -0800, David wrote:
> > It has been updated again:
> >
> >  The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time,
> > ???????????? (chronos).[2][3] (Ken Thompson, author of cron, has
> > confirmed this in a private communication with Brian Kernighan.)
>
> Yes, but you've removed the reference to the incorrect expansions.  As
> I noted at some length earlier in this thread, that's not appropriate.
> It ignores the fact that people have made these claims, it removes the
> comment that they're unsubstantiated, and it prepares the field for
> somebody else to make the claim again, with possibly even more bizarre
> expmanations.  I won't back it out yet, because I can see further
> changes coming from other directions.  Once again this Tedickey
> character has been very active.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
> problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20160102/75fca60b/attachment.html>