On 9 Aug 2000, Kai Henningsen wrote:
> Well, given that (on Debian at least) one is (by default) /var/spool/exim/
> and the other is /var/spool/mail/, I think of the two as "Exim spool" and
> "mail spool".
Aarrgghh!! I didn't realise Debian (ab)used the word "spool" like that,
though I have heard people talk of "the mail spool". How very confusing.
I think of a spool as a temporary place of storage for something in
transit, which (conventional) mailboxes are not. So I would interpret
"mail spool" as the Exim spool unless something alerted me otherwise.
AFAIK, the word "spool" was first widely used for the S in HASP,
originally a bolt-on to IBM's OS/360, where the spool stored input and
output in transit. Maybe we need another word. Now, back in the 60's
there was a system that had a "well" that did this kind of thing. No,
maybe not. Maybe I've been around too long... :-)
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
