Nov 21

The Origin of "bin"?

Joe and I had a 30-second discussion today about where the term “bin” came from, as in “cgi-bin” or “/usr/bin”.

  • Joe: it’s short for “binary.”
  • Deane: it’s like a bin where you throw stuff

Anyone have an opinion or other resources?

by Deane   November 21, 2005 12:38 PM   |

Comments

by Joseph scott,   November 21, 2005 12:56 PM  

I'd always understood it to stand for binary. The FreeBSD man page for hier has some possible clues:

/bin/ user utilities fundamental to both single-user and multi-user environments

/sbin/ system programs and administration utilities fundamental to both single-user and multi-user environments

Doesn't come out and say binary, but pretty close.

/lib/ critical system libraries needed for binaries in /bin and /sbin

This would seem to imply binary for /bin and /sbin.

by ,   November 21, 2005 2:40 PM  

Another vote for binary...

by Guy,   November 21, 2005 3:23 PM  

Yeah, binary here too.

by Greg,   November 21, 2005 3:30 PM  

binary. why are you challenging Joe anyway?

by Jon,   November 21, 2005 3:52 PM  

Binary, baby, binary all the way.

by Sheldon Kotyk,   November 21, 2005 3:54 PM  

I'm pretty sure it stands for ascii. oh wait. no. binary. sorry.

by Sauron,   November 21, 2005 4:22 PM  

Well, I went to the canonical source for geeks: Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin

Says binary. I've always thought the same, so I have to say it's binary.

by Deane,   November 21, 2005 4:25 PM  

I'm shutting off comments here, lest this get any more humiliating...

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