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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!hunter.premier.net!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news.bright.net!tole-cs-14.dial.bright.net!user From: gchamber@mail.bright.net (Glenn Chambers) Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: 14 Nov 1996 01:50:31 GMT Organization: The Chambers Family Lines: 24 Message-ID: <gchamber-1311962115400001@tole-cs-14.dial.bright.net> References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <E0tAts.BAr.0.queen@torfree.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: tole-cs-14.dial.bright.net Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26392 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1489 alt.folklore.computers:124559 > grep: > "Generic Regular Expression Printer" Clever, but not correct. grep is from the ed 'g' command, which had the syntax: g/<regular expression>/<command> where 'command' was any normal ed command, such as 'p', or 's/old/new/'. Thus, g/a[0-9]*/p printed all lines containing the letter 'a' followed by zero or more digits. If you describe this command as 'g/re/p', you'll immediately see where the name of the program came from. -- Glenn Chambers gchamber@mail.bright.net Toledo, OH