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Comment by mlmartin | Hacker News Reader

I always say 'bin' as 'bine' in relation to the folder. This is a hill I will die on.

It's short for binary. And a 'bin' is where you put your rubbish, not your hard work.

This kind of flipped a switch in my brain, that makes a lot more sense than the "trash bin" pronunciation.

However, I will continue saying "bin" because old habits die hard and "bine" just sounds wrong to my brain for no good reason :)

It sounds dangerously like “bind”, so that might introduce some confusion in a circle that is accustomed to “bin”.

I'm mostly a casual linux user, so honestly asking, why is sounding like "bind" dangerous?

edit: A quick search turned up the `bind` command to bind a name to a socket. That makes sense.

I was thinking more about the bind dns server when I made the comment, but yeah. Just thinking that verbally referring to the “bine” folder might cause confusion in certain contexts, where “bin” pronunciation avoids it entirely.

Also BIND is the Berkeley internet name daemon aka DNS server.

Do you also pronounce char as in character or as in charcoal?

I pronounce it as "car". Don't know where that came from.

I think this pronunciation sounds right because it comes from "character", which doesn't have the "ch" sound.

'Car' has a different (longer) 'a' to that in 'character', though, is I think the point above.

I meant to agree with the point above, I pronounce it ‘car’ as well. For some reason ‘care’ doesn’t sound right either.

Do you also call /lib 'libe'? Or are you okay with 'lib' as it's not conflicting with other meanings?

I’m the only gray-beard hacker I know that pronounces it ‘libe’. But bin is bin. Not sure why, really.

Except if it's a parts bin maybe. ;)

It's an odd coincidence that shortening "binaries" to "bin" makes sense in this way, but you're right, /bin is a literally a bin to put your binaries.

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