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Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 00:46:34 +1000
To: ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org
From: Peter Donald <donaldp@apache.org>
Subject: Re: [SUBMIT] file set cullers
Cc: ant-dev@jakarta.apache.org
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At 04:36  3/4/01 +0200, Stefan Bodewig wrote:
>I'm not sure about the name "culler". I went to SysTran and e-lingo
>and tried to translate it to German, neither knew the term - so I
>tried "cull" and retrieved two very different translations. SysTran
>said "Ausschu=DF" which means either something like board/committee or
>garbage, neither makes sense to me. e-lingo said "Auswahl" which is
>choice in English. Is the term ambiguous or is SysTran's database
>weird?

"Culling" is the process of killing animals in a herd to make the whole
herd more valuable (ie you cull the weak or with bad breeding etc). It
migrated to computer science terminoogy in a number of cases (especially in
computer graphics where it refers to removing things). I guess it is
understandable that a dictionary wouldn't pick that up ;)


Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
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