Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rtech.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!gymble!lll-crg!dual!unisoft!mtxinu!rtech!jeff From: jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.dcom Subject: Re: Squeezing files. Message-ID: <518@rtech.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 03:52:31 EDT Article-I.D.: rtech.518 Posted: Fri Jun 28 03:52:31 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 30-Jun-85 00:49:06 EDT References: <1414@ecsvax.UUCP> <784@turtlevax.UUCP> <1861@ukma.UUCP> <789@turtlevax.UUCP> <604@umd5.UUCP> Organization: Relational Technology, Alameda CA Lines: 19 Xref: watmath net.nlang:3296 net.dcom:1071 > > > >I'm curious; what is the etymology of the word "binary" as it is > >sometimes used to refer to executable machine code? And why does it > >imply program rather than data? > Here's my guess. There are many ways to represent numbers (as we all should know). Binary is a format that people have trouble reading, and strings of the characters 0-9 are easy to read. I believe that, by extension, the word "binary" is applied to any non-human-readable data, especially when it is stored in files. The human-readable and non-human-readable forms of programs (source and object or executable code) parallel the human-readable and non-human-readable forms of numbers, so its easy to draw an analogy. -- Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.) aka Swazoo Koolak {amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff