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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!howland.erols.net!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-pen-16.sprintlink.net!mhv.net!usenet From: Mike Ack <macker@mhv.net> Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:34:06 -0500 Organization: MHVNet, the Mid Hudson Valley's Internet connection Lines: 26 Message-ID: <32A09A3E.42A8@mhv.net> References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <E0tAts.BAr.0.queen@torfree.net> <gchamber-1311962115400001@tole-cs-14.dial.bright.net> <57fq0h$282@nr1.toronto.istar.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: port51.mhv.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01KIT (Win95; U) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26799 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1636 alt.folklore.computers:125338 Blake Winton wrote: > > In article <gchamber-1311962115400001@tole-cs-14.dial.bright.net>, gchamber@mail.bright.net (Glenn Chambers) wrote: > >> grep: > >> "Generic Regular Expression Printer" > >grep is from the ed 'g' command, which had the syntax: > >g/<regular expression>/<command> > >If you describe this command as 'g/re/p', you'll immediately see where the > >name of the program came from. > > And, amusingly enough, I was using vi one day a few months back, and I > wanted to see all the lines in the current file which started with > "Foo"... I thought "Damn, I'm going to have to shell out, and run grep, > and... hey, I wonder if..." So I typed in ":g/^Foo/p", and it worked! > > So it seems that grep has maintained it's origins. (of course the next > thing I did was ":g/re/p" :) > > Blake. Not to split hairs or anything, but I'm pretty sure 'g' stands for 'global'.... -- -mka (macker@aslan.com) macker@mhv.net nangi namaj perez