Xref: utzoo alt.flame:10325 comp.unix.wizards:18418 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!rpp386!jfh From: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) Newsgroups: alt.flame,comp.unix.wizards Subject: UNIX history made easy Message-ID: <17085@rpp386.cactus.org> Date: 1 Oct 89 08:38:26 GMT References:<20226@usc.edu> Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) Followup-To: alt.flame Organization: TrishTrash Readers, Inc. Lines: 38 In article bschwart@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Not a Rich Republican) writes: >In article <20226@usc.edu> gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel) writes: >>In article mg32+@andrew.cmu.edu >>(Michael Ginsberg) writes: >> >>>what DOES grep stand for??? > >It is named after the author of the program: Gregula Rex Pression, Ph.D. No, it is named after the names of the four authors who worked on the original regular expression matching code for the UNIX editor 'ed'. Their names are Gregior, Ritchie, Ebersol, and Pike. Micheal Gregior is the creator of the UNIX regular expression matching grammar [ he invent the *, ., and [] syntax BTW ] Dennis Ritchie we know all about. Ralph Ebersol [ who died two years later on the NYC to DC Metroliner at age 24 ] was the youngest person to ever work at Murray Hill on PWB UNIX and 'ed' was just one of his many contributions, his least famous being the `tacky bit' on directories. Pike, of Kernighan and Pike fame [ The UNIX Programming Environment ], write quite a few of the UNIX system utilities. He was probably the number four UNIX programmer involved in the evolution of 7th Edition UNIX, just after Ritchie, Thompson, and Kernighan. He and Dennis worked together on the 'pr' text formatting utility. These were just four of Al Aho's employees [ Aho, BTW is the 'A' in 'AWK' - Aho, Weinberg, and Kernighan ] in the late seventies. A little known piece of trivial is that sales of Aho's 'Dragon Book' financed the purchase of the original PDP-11 Thompson and Ritchie worked on. -- John F. Haugh II +-Things you didn't want to know:------ VoiceNet: (512) 832-8832 Data: -8835 | The real meaning of MACH is ... InterNet: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org | ... Messages Are Crufty Hacks. UUCPNet: {texbell|bigtex}!rpp386!jfh +--------------------------------------