From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!zeppo!wheps!eagle!mhtsa!alice!physics!gill
Newsgroups: net.general
Title: net.general
Article-I.D.: physics.152
Posted: Fri Aug 20 20:24:59 1982
Received: Sat Aug 21 06:33:37 1982

...rc as far back as I can remember stod for "run com" as in a
file with shell commands to be run. The only "official" rc file
those days was /etc/rc, the going-multi-user runcom file. Then
came the ".profile," which was a run com for each user to
be run as he logged in.

Now I guess it means lots of different things. The .mailrc is
the list of commands for mail to execute when it starts up while
.cshrc is the same for the C shell.

Pace Willisson here thinks he heard someone say this all started in
the CTSS days.

	I never liked the "runcom" word, but can't think of anything
that better describes its function (perhaps "startup?", but some
runcoms were for doing non start-up tasks).

	Gill Pratt

	...alice!gill OR gill@mc