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>>alexho+(OP)
Not enough people know this, but when you say "etc" out loud in reference to the directory, it is supposed to sound like "etsy".

I expect there will be people who reply to this comment to argue it should be "E-T-C" or "Et Cetera". You can ignore those people; they probably say "exclamation mark" instead of "bang".

>>IvyMik+oe
Why?

>>oneeye+Mf
Faster to say, and that's how I learned it in 1992.

This is one of those "jif" v. "gif" holy war issues. (Maybe "etc" is a minor skirmish rather than a full blown war.)

>>IvyMik+Bg
Not the best of arguments. "ets", if anything, would be even faster, and "how you learned it in 1992"? Unix V5 had an etc directory in 1974 or so (http://pdp2011.sytse.net/wordpress/pdp-11/sessions/unix-v5)

Now, if Dennis told you it was pronounced etsy, you would have a point.

>>Someon+ri1
Well, in 1992 when I learned it, it seemed like a long established and widespread practice. And I could hardly be blamed for not having a personal data point of the pronunciation when I was one years old. :)

If you look up "etc unix pronounciation", while there is a lot of bickering, I still think "etsy" is the slight majority among old timers. I will admit that this usage seems to have faded.

I spent some time trying to find video of any of the original Bell Labs Unix team actually saying the directory out loud--I couldn't find any. I'm going to keep searching, but they honestly seem to go out of their way to avoid it. I did find some fascinating videos along the way [1].

To my chagrin, there are a few oblique text references on the web that say indicate that within Bell Labs, it was pronounced "etcetera". But I'd still like a canonical reference.

[1] Like this video from 1982, including Kernighan, Thompson, Ritchie, and Aho. http://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0