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From: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
Newsgroups: alt.flame,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: UNIX history made easy
Message-ID: <17089@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 2 Oct 89 04:23:12 GMT
References:  <20226@usc.edu>  <17085@rpp386.cactus.org> 
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: TrishTrash Readers, Inc.
Lines: 34

In article  bschwart@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Not a Rich Republican) writes:
>In article <17085@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>]Their names are Gregior, Ritchie, Ebersol, and Pike.
>
>You think so?
>
>_The UNIX Programming Environment_, Kernighan and Pike, p. 18, says:
>
>	The name comes from the ed command g/regular expression/p . . .

Just another UNIX Urban Legend.  The R.E. code for the ed editor
comes directly from the grep R.E. code.  How can it possibly be
named after something that didn't exist yet?

They couldn't name it `find', that was already used, so they named
it `grep'.  The same thing happened with `awk', it was supposed to
be the `D' programming language but the compiler frontend would
have been `dd', another already-been-used name.

>Personally I more often use fgrep.

Well, Al Franken isn't that well known of a UNIX programmer [ which is
why so few people use fgrep ].  I prefer the GNU grep better, although
I understand the four above named authors are currently engaged in a
lawsuit against the Free Software Foundation.  Richard Stallmen has had
to sell his house to finance the suit - the direct result of not
charging money for software.

Which sets us up for the next question - who is the first `E' in `egrep'?
-- 
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