Hacker News Reader

>What does xfrm mean? I don’t know!

transform. `man ip-xfrm`

Thanks. I agree with Julia, it's a weird name: `x` is often associated to Xorg tools, and there's this scary `rm` at the end that evokes some kind of remove tool.

EDIT maybe "X" to mean "cross/transform" is an American-ism. Going for the first time in the US, it took me a while to compute that "Ped Xing" street signs should be read "pedestrian crossing" :D (and immediately think: why not a simple evocative symbol of a road with someone walking on it?!)

X is a rotated cross, so x-ing is read as cross-ing, which makes more sense. X for trans- is also pretty common, like xfer for transfer.

TIL, xfer means transfer

"xform" would've been more obvious, but "xfrm" loses too much letters and indeed becomes something like "xf86 remove" :D

"xform" I've seen elsewhere, like in GNU tar's --xform option to transform filenames. It does accept --transform as well, though, and I agree that "xfrm" doesn't readily map to "transform" for me either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com