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What does the rc mean?

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+1 I was just going to ask the same question. I recently installed freebsd and I started wonder about many files ending with rc. – claws May 29 '10 at 20:32
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There's a bit of interesting historical perspective about its derivation on this page:

"rc" derives from "runcom", from the MIT CTSS system, ca. 1965.

and that

"rc" in Unix is a fossil from that usage.'

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up vote 11 down vote

It stands for Run Commands

And as the name already says it can contain a listing of commands to run. For example in a xinitrc file You can list commands to run when initializing X. so you can make a Xterm window popup, or load GDM/Gnome.

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Although, this isn't always the case, for example, Gimp stores it's configuration files in files named colorrc, contextrc, controllerrc, etc. – MiffTheFox May 23 '10 at 13:46
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up vote 8 down vote

It stands for Run Commands.

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protected by Nifle Apr 4 at 19:28

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