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> The fact of the matter is, dd is not a disk writing tool. Neither “d” is for “disk”, “drive” or “device”. Where does dd's name come from then? Its man page d
by G3rn0ti 4y ago
> The fact of the matter is, dd is not a disk writing tool. Neither “d” is for “disk”, “drive” or “device”.
Where does dd's name come from then? Its man page does not tell.
- OJFord 4y agoSee footnote: > dd actually has two jobs: Convert and Copy. A post on comp.unix.misc (incorrectly) claimed that the intended name “cc” was taken by the C compiler, so the letters were shifted in the same way we ended up with a Window system called X. A more likely explanation is given in that thread as pointed out by Paweł and Bruce in the comments: the name, syntax and purpose is almost identical to the JCL “Dataset Definition” command found in 1960s IBM mainframes.