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[comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers] Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Okay, somebody asked about how things like "grep" got their names. An
unusually large number of fools have posted various acronymic origins
for grep. PdS refutes one of these.
grep really comes from the ed(1) editor. If you wanted to search
globally for a regular expression "re" and print it, you would type:
g/re/p
For example, to see all occurances of foo, it would be g/foo/p.
------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: [email protected] (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Date: 14 Nov 1996 20:50:30 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
In article <[email protected]>,
William J. Hayes <[email protected]> wrote:
> grep:
> "Generic Regular Expression Printer"
No, no, you're wrong. It's from "Generic Repeated Pattern Evaluator", an old
IBM mainframe program that searched for text in 80 column card decks and
edited them into new decks. When it was ported to UNIX (using the "struct"
tool to convert the original Fortran to Ratfor, then to C) they couldn't
fit the whole functionality in so they only provided the "print" edit.
So it was called "grpep", then shortened to "grep" after Bill Gates made
a hilarious typo in the Xenix-86 version at a trade show. The actual details
were hushed up, and they changed the command to make sure it never happened
again.
The story was created that it was shortened because it was easier to type
"grep" than "grpep" on an IBM card punch, but this was an obvious cover-up,
since the "grpep" version was never used on an IBM.
Ironically the full functionality of "grpe" was ported to micros for the
first time on OS/2 in an implementation written in REXX (named after a dog
that barked when his owner sat down at a computer).
- --
</peter>
------- End of forwarded message -------
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