[ale] pronunciation

[Sue Bauer-Lee]

I couldn't resist. :)  Eiter is correct.


daemon

<operating system> /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ (From the mythological meaning, later 
rationalised as the acronym "Disk And Execution MONitor") A program that is 
not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur.
The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a 
daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because 
it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon).

For example, under ITS writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory would 
invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file. The advantage 
is that programs wanting files printed need neither compete for access to, 
nor understand any idiosyncrasies of, the LPT. They simply enter their 
implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons 
are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever
or be regenerated at intervals.

Unix systems run many daemons, chiefly to handle requests for services from 
other hosts on a network. Most of these are now started as required by a 
single real daemon, inetd, rather than running continuously. Examples are 
cron (local timed command execution), rshd (remote command execution), 
rlogind and telnetd (remote login), ftpd, nfsd (file transfer), lpd (printing).

Daemon and demon are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct 
connotations (see demon). The term "daemon" was introduced to computing 
by CTSS people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and used it to refer to what 
ITS called a dragon.

 [Jargon File]

 (1995-05-11)


 Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2000 Denis Howe

On Sun, Feb 04, 2001 at 03:15:24PM -0500, Christopher Bergeron wrote:
> 
> Considering that pronouncing "Linux" can either give you credibility or make
> you look "paper":  Is there a preffered pronunciation for Daemons?  I've
> heard it pronounced both ways.  This may sound silly, but I'm quite
> curious...
> 
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.

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