On Wed, Sep 1, 2021 at 9:29 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> As an aside, I'd always been under the impression that the "AB" in "ABEND"
> comes from, "abnormal"?
>
That was what taught when I was hacking on TSS/360 (before I even saw UNIX).
    The term was used in the IBM batch system to say your job died or
stopped with an abnormal ending (*i.e.* The job returned exit(NONZEROVALUE) to
the OS in UNIX terms [or the OS killed it for some reason and forced it to
exit in that manner].

As for Richard's question about abort(), no idea.  I had heard the term
used to kill off an errant process/job/task used in other systems before I
ever came to Unix.   You'd probably need some like Doug M or Knuth that
goes back far enought to help you with history.
ᐧ