[ajross]

That's amusing, but the linguistics sounds wrong to me. The "patch" tool was written by Larry Wall (of Perl fame) in the early 80's based on the preexisting diff format. Neither had much ancestry in common with paper tape storage, which was never really a Unix thing.

[raldi]

Introduction of patch: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.unix-wizards/SDJZ28k40Co...

Larry Wall using the term "patch" prior to that: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/net.news.b/HhK847iU7ZA/7Wox7...

(It was already a well-established term.)

[bboreham]

You think Larry Wall chose the name with no reference to existing terminology?

[ajross]

I'm saying there's no evidence that this terminology has anything to do with paper tape