🚀 go-pugleaf

I think it's time to start up the old etymology debate, as I don't think
it's really come up in this newsgroup.  One of my housemates and I were
discussing the origin of some of the Unix (and other) system commands.  He
was asking particularly about biff and finger.  Supposedly an old Berkeley
man page gave the breakdown of biff as "Be Informed iF mail arrives and who
it is From" (ack), but apparently conventional wisdom has it that biff was
the name of the programmer's dog.

As to finger, however, I was quite stumped.  Programs with this name and
function appear on a variety of systems.  I had always assumed it came from
the old crime movie usage ("Boiz, I think Bugzy has squealed to the cops and
fingered Guido as the one who iced the boss..."), and not the vulgar.  In
other words, finger :-- to point out, describe in detail.  Does anyone have
any better guesses?
-- 
Sean Colbath
col...@cs.rochester.edu			...uunet!rochester!colbath
"And now for something completely different..."