Origin of 'awk'
964[jak]-Robert Halloran
rkh at mtune.ATT.COM
Wed Mar 9 02:13:04 AEST 1988
In article <2111 at ukecc.engr.uky.edu> wes at engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>I was watching an old episode of Batman, and was enjoying the
>requisite fight scene. The Boy Wonder delivered a hefty blow
>to a villain's henchman, and the necessary 'visual sound effect'
>came up on the screen. But, lo! This was no *ordinary* Batman
>sound effect, for filling my screen was the magic word
>
>@AWK!!!@
>
>Is *this* the true origin of one of my favorite UNIX commands?
>Could it have really come from a campy 60's action/adventure show?
>From "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan & Pike:
"'sed' was designed & implemented by Lee McMahon, using 'ed' as a base.
'awk' was designed by Al Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan, by
a much less elegant process. Naming a language after its authors also
shows a certain poverty of imagination."
A, W, K for the authors' last initials, OK?
Bob Halloran
Distributed Programming
Tools Group
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