From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 9 21:52:38 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A68E137B401 for ; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from janus.gatekeeper.com (janus.gatekeeper.com [192.84.10.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 41F5843E42 for ; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:37 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from shc@cfg.com) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by janus.gatekeeper.com (8.12.3/8.12.3) id g9A4qYlD059765; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from shc@cfg.com) Received: from adsl-64-160-23-107.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net(64.160.23.107) by janus.gatekeeper.com:587 via xsmap (0.2.24 2002-09-15 18:13Z) id xma059756; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:15 -0700 X-Xsmap-Tags: R600 Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:52:12 -0700 From: Steve Caine X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <12228314128.20021009215212@cfg.com> To: "Toby Irvine" Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Please help me In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 grep was invented to get around these limitations [as described previously for ed]. 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 grep 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