Re: make mrproper

James Lewis Nance (jlnance@intrex.net)
Thu, 25 Jan 2001 09:00:26 -0500


On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 05:33:02PM +0000, leo.howell@ntlworld.com wrote:
> Long ago, about January 24, Joseph wrote:
> > >From John Levon on Wednesday, 24 January, 2001:
> > >Idle curiosity, but what does the "mr" in make mrproper
> > >stand for ?
> >
> > My guess is that it is a joke. 'Meister Proper' is the German
> > Mister Clean (the big, bald guy on the same-name cleaning
> > agent bottle). I'm not sure of the spelling, though. It's been
> > a while since I've seen the commercials.
> > I dunno if it's Finnish, though. Never been there. Maybe it was
> > put in by a German developer. Maybe not. It was there when
> > I started.
>
> Hmm; I always thought it stood for m(ake the)r(emake) proper
> ie, recompile properly if something got messed up.
>
> But I like the Mister Clean better :)

I saw a post from Linus once about this. It is Finnish for "Mr. Clean".

Jim
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