UNIX history made easy

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <Oct.1.12.52.19.1989.21648 at elbereth.rutgers.edu> bschwart at elbereth.rutgers.edu (Not a Rich Republican) writes:
>In article <17085 at rpp386.cactus.org> jfh at 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'?
-- 
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 at rpp386.cactus.org         |    ... Messages Are Crufty Hacks.
UUCPNet:  {texbell|bigtex}!rpp386!jfh   +--------------------------------------