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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: awk arguments
Message-ID: <13424@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 26 Jul 90 20:13:04 GMT
References: <9413@goofy.Apple.COM>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <9413@goofy.Apple.COM> vlb@apple.COM (Vicki Brown) writes:
>By the way, rumor has it that Brian Kernighan says "The name is awk, not
>nawk", for which he gets even more of my respect that he already had.

The way I understand the naming is that it follows the same convention
that has been in use on UNIX systems since the beginning, whenever it
is thought that a new release of a utility might be incompatible with
the previous version:
	(1) Install the new version of "foo" as "nfoo";
	    link "foo" to "ofoo".
	(2) Users now have time to investigate what changes if any
	    their applications need to work with "nfoo".  If they
	    don't have time to deal with it, they should change to
	    using "ofoo" instead of "foo".  If something is newly
	    developed that depends on features present only in the
	    new version, it should invoke "nfoo".
	(3) Considerably later, "nfoo" is linked to "foo", replacing
	    the previous "foo" link.  "ofoo" remains installed.  Note
	    that all applications continue to work at this point.
	(4) Everyone is encouraged to finish converting from "ofoo"
	    to the new version of "foo", and to just use the name
	    "foo" instead of "nfoo".
	(5) Considerably later, "ofoo" and "nfoo" are removed/