Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:17:54 +0100 | | From | Erik Mouw <> | | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/19] MUTEX: Introduce simple mutex implementation |
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On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:52:55PM +0100, Erik Mouw wrote: > Just FYI, according to Dijkstra[1] V means "verhoog" which is dutch for > "increase". P means "prolaag" which isn't a dutch word, just something > Dijkstra invented. I guess he did that because "decrease" is "verlaag" > in dutch and that would give you the confusing V() and V() > operations...
Last night I've been browsing a little more through Dijkstra's papers, and in a completely unrelated paper[1] about a now obsolete computer I found that "prolaag" is a neologism coming from "probeer te verlagen", which means "try and decrease".
Erik
[1] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD00xx/EWD51.html
-- +-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 -- | Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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