Learn English – Where did the word “proc” originate

etymologyneologisms

The word "proc" is used to describe an event that occurs at various intervals and seems to be a term unique to programming and gaming:

When does that event proc?

If that trigger procs it will cause […]

This card has an ability that procs when you play […]

When the card proc'ed/procced, it killed off all opposing creatures and won me the game.

The word does not appear in the dictionaries I checked. "Proc" is listed as an abbreviation for words like "proceeding":

proc —

  1. procedure
  2. proceedings
  3. process
  4. proclamation
  5. proctor

But these seem completely unrelated to the usage I've noted above. So where did this term originate?

Best Answer

According to this article from 2006, proc comes from way back in the old MUD (multi-user dungeon) days, although it didn't get popularized until Everquest.

Short for spec_proc (special procedure), which is a bit of code triggered to cover a special case that the default code doesn’t handle.

In the older muds there was almost no variation between what a given object could do. For example all weapons used the weapon type, then you could specify damage type (was it a sword or a mace), damage ranges, and so on.

To get the weapon to do anything special, you had limited choices. Depending on the architecture, you could attach a spell to be cast, or could attach a script if the code supported it. In the codebases that Brad & co. played, the devs could not script, so the codebase allowed a pointer to a special hardcoded procedure to be entered in the weapon data.

“Proc” is almost entirely EQ slang… Even in the muds, it wasn’t that widely used because only some codebases used the term. It took EQ publicizing the inherited term to make it common knowledge.

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