Editing Inode (section)

==Etymology==
There has been uncertainty on the [[Linux kernel mailing list]] about the reason for the "i" in "inode". In 2002, the question was brought to Unix pioneer [[Dennis Ritchie]], who replied:<ref>{{cite mailing list |url=http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0207.2/1182.html |title=Fwd: Re: What does the "i" in inode stand for? Dennis Ritchie doesn't know either. |first=Rob |last=Landley |date=July 20, 2002 |mailing-list=linux-kernel |access-date=2011-01-12}}</ref> {{quote|In truth, I don't know either. It was just a term that we started to use. "Index" is my best guess, because of the slightly unusual file system structure that stored the access information of files as a flat array on the disk, with all the hierarchical directory information living aside from this. Thus the i-number is an index in this array, the i-node is the selected element of the array. (The "i-" notation was used in the 1st edition manual; its hyphen was gradually dropped.)
}}

A 1978 paper by Ritchie and [[Ken Thompson]] bolsters the notion of "index" being the etymological origin of inodes. They wrote:<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ritchie|first1=Dennis M.|last2=Thompson|first2=Ken |title=The UNIX Time-Sharing System |journal=The Bell System Technical Journal|date=1978|volume=57|issue=6|pages=1913–1914|url=https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905 |access-date=19 December 2015}}</ref> {{quote|[…] a directory entry contains only a name for the associated file and a [[Pointer (computer programming)|pointer]] to the file itself. This pointer is an integer called the ''i-number'' (for index number) of the file.  When the file is accessed, its i-number is used as an index into a system table (the ''i-list'') stored in a known part of the device on which the directory resides.  The entry found thereby (the file's ''i-node'') contains the description of the file.
}} Additionally, Maurice J. Bach wrote that the word ''inode'' "is a contraction of the term index node and is commonly used in literature on the UNIX system".<ref>{{cite book|title =The Design of the UNIX Operating System|date = 1986 |publisher = Prentice Hall|author= Maurice J. Bach |isbn= 978-0132017992}}</ref>