May 15, 2003

biff

/bif/ vt.

[now rare] To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility biff1, which was in turn named after a friendly dog who used to chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD was in development. There was a legend that it had a habit of barking whenever the mailman came, but the author of biff says this is not true. No relation to B1FF.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:57 AM

Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?