Hi Steve,

Thanks for responding to my random mutterings.

You know, I had never heard that explanation, and didn't know there had been/is a war about this pronunciation.

Here's my experience: I encountered my first Unix system in the 1970's. I was working at Lancaster University and we were evaluating a Harris (sp?) system. We reckoned the directory was "et cetera" and nobody told us otherwise. We didn't buy a Harris.

At my next job in the 1980's I attended a course run by HP on their HP-UX system where I am certain the trainer called /etc "et cetera". We did end up with HP, Sun, Apollo, SGI and DEC Unix flavours thereafter, and in none of them was /etc ever anything other than "et cetera".

I have heard it called "slash ee tee cee" but that's probably an anomaly.

Plus, Wikipedia reckons "et cetera" is correct and "extended text configuration"/"et see" is a backronym. I have to say it certainly smells of backronym and folk etymology to me :-)

I rest my case ...