Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:12 -0700 From: Steve Caine <shc@cfg.com> To: "Toby Irvine" <tobyirvine@hotmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Please help me Message-ID: <12228314128.20021009215212@cfg.com> In-Reply-To: <F5z5b6KZmcK8r6beUzm00000029@hotmail.com> References: <F5z5b6KZmcK8r6beUzm00000029@hotmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 10/9/2002 20:08, tobyirvine@hotmail.com wrote:
> I have one question for you. I have been looking to find out what the
> command/utility "grep" actually means or stands for. [...]
"Advanced Editing on UNIX" by Brian W. Kernighan, Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, August 4, 1978,
says:
"The program <b>grep</b> was invented to get around these
limitations [as described previously for <b>ed</b>]. The
search patterns that we have described in the paper are
often called 'regular expressions', and 'grep', stands for
g/re/p
That describes exactly what <b>grep</b> does -- it prints
every line in a set of files that contain a particular
pattern."
This is from the "UNIX Time Sharing System: UNIX
Programmer's Manual" as published by Holt, Rinehart and
Winston in 1983. I've got the original Bell Labs memo in my
archives somewhere, but I'm pretty sure this is what I
remember reading when I first met 6th Edition UNIX in the
late 70's.
Steve.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?12228314128.20021009215212>