Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!mtune!rkh
From: rkh@mtune.ATT.COM (964[jak]-Robert Halloran)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Origin of 'awk'
Message-ID: <1448@mtune.ATT.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 88 16:13:04 GMT
References: <2111@ukecc.engr.uky.edu>
Reply-To: rkh@mtune.UUCP (Robert Halloran)
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
Lines: 32
Keywords: not hardly

In article <2111@ukecc.engr.uky.edu> wes@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>I was watching an old episode of Batman, and was enjoying the 
>requisite fight scene.  The Boy Wonder delivered a hefty blow
>to a villain's henchman, and the necessary 'visual sound effect'
>came up on the screen.  But, lo!  This was no *ordinary* Batman
>sound effect, for filling my screen was the magic word
>
>@AWK!!!@
>
>Is *this* the true origin of one of my favorite UNIX commands?
>Could it have really come from a campy 60's action/adventure show?

From "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan & Pike:

"'sed' was designed & implemented by Lee McMahon, using 'ed' as a base.
 'awk' was designed by Al Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan, by
 a much less elegant process.  Naming a language after its authors also
 shows a certain poverty of imagination."

A, W, K for the authors' last initials, OK?
						Bob Halloran
						Distributed Programming
						  Tools Group
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