Joe and I had a 30-second discussion today about where the term “bin” came from, as in “cgi-bin” or “/usr/bin”.
Anyone have an opinion or other resources?
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard: In an effort to salvage some dignity from the post on what "bin" means, I'll point you to this link provided in the comments by Sauron that explains most of the cryptic directories in your average Unix installation. Of note, "usr" doesn't mean "user." [It's a] secondary…
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.
Another vote for binary...
Yeah, binary here too.
binary. why are you challenging Joe anyway?
Binary, baby, binary all the way.
I'm pretty sure it stands for ascii. oh wait. no. binary. sorry.
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.
I'm shutting off comments here, lest this get any more humiliating...