The meaning of ran of ranlib

[Peng Yu]

Hi,

I see that some people say "ran" in "ranlib" means random. But I don't
see this explanation on manpage and this explanation is not
necessarily official. Could the author of ranlib provide an official
explanation what "ran" means?

https://superuser.com/questions/1109634/why-is-ranlib-called-ranlib/1109641

If the meaning of "ran" is indeed "random", so I can use it to store
arbitrary files besides just library files. In this sense, the "lib"
part of the name "ranlib" is a monomer?

Also, I don't see that ranlib makes any changes to the file x.a below.
Why is it so? Thanks.

echo a > a.txt
echo b > b.txt
ar cr x.a *.txt
cp x.a y.a
ranlib x.a
diff {x,y}.a
--
Regards,
Peng