Re: Alright, I give up. What does the "i" in "inode" stand for?

Måns Rullgård (mru@users.sourceforge.net)
19 Jul 2002 21:58:27 +0200


Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org> writes:

> On Friday 19 July 2002 12:45 am, CaT wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 09:38:57PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 06:33:54PM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> > > > I've been sitting on this question for years, hoping I'd come
> > > > across the answer, and I STILL don't know what the "i" is short for.
> > > > Somebody here has got to know this. :)
> > >
> > > Incore node, I believe. In the original Unix code there was dinode and
> > > inode if I remember correctly, for disk node and incore node.
> >
> > That's a new one. I always thought it was 'information node' so in the
> > above it'd be disk information node and just information node.
> >
> > Makes sense to me in any case. :)
>
> So far I've also received off-list mails saying that it stands for
> "index" (this person cited "the design of the unix operating
> system", by Maurice J Bach, which I have on my shelf but don't
> remember that bit from), and another vote for "indirection" from
> somebody I recognize as being on this list longer than I have...

Andrew S. Tanenbaum claims it's index nodes in 'Modern Operating
Systems, 2nd ed.'. He also wants them spelled i-node.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@users.sf.net
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