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From: lcc.richard@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Origin of the name grep
Message-ID: <12860@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Aug-84 16:19:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12860
Posted: Sun Aug 26 16:19:31 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 19:59:44 EDT
Lines: 18

From:            Richard Mathews <lcc.richard@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA>

	Article-I.D.: pegasus.1641

	Does anybody know the origin of the word grep?
	-- 
	==> Ephrayim J. Naiman @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories
	 (201) 576-6259
	Paths: [ihnp4, allegra, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!naiman

I believe that it comes from the 'ed' command:
	g/regular expression/p
which executes the print command on every line on which the "regular
expression" appears.  Thus 'grep' could be said to be an acronym for
"global regular expression print".

Richard M. Mathews
lcc!richard@ucla-cs