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Article #4461

Re: unix acronyms -collecting a list?

#4461
From: Scott W. Gifford
Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 00:00
36 lines
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Sam Hostetter <shostett@indiana.edu> wrote in article
<337B0F6C.4C71614A@indiana.edu>...
> Brian Raiter wrote:
> > 
> > Phil Eschallier  <phil@bts.com>:
> > 
> > > grep = Global Regular Expresion Parser
> 
> 	Actually, grep stands for General Regular Expresion Parser
> 

  The story that I have heard about grep is that the name comes from a
common usage of Sed...In pre-grep days, the same thing was (and still can
be) accomplished with:

	sed -e g/regular expression/p

As this usage became more common, documentation, newsgroups messages, etc.
began to abbreviate "regular expression" to "re", leading to people talking
about:

	sed -e g/re/p

And that, as they say is history.  I don't remember where this story came
from, and there's a fair-to-middling chance it has no basis in fact, but I
choose to believe it.

  And if you do, too, that would make grep a "Global Regular Expression
Printer"...

  Just an interesting story,

-----Scott.
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From: "Scott W. Gifford" <sgifford@tir.com>
Subject: Re: unix acronyms -collecting a list?
Date: 1997/05/16
Message-ID: <01bc622b$b51fb0c0$f8298acd@sgifford.tir.com>
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