Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!amdcad!crackle!tim
From: tim@crackle.amd.com (Tim Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Expansion of the acronym "grep"
Message-ID: <25849@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 5 Jun 89 00:53:55 GMT
References: <25249@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1989Jun4.185134.13185@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Sender: news@amdcad.AMD.COM
Reply-To: tim@amd.com (Tim Olson)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
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In article <1989Jun4.185134.13185@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> romwa@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Royal Ontario Museum) writes:
| grep < global regular expression

Almost.

"grep" comes from a (once) commonly-used ed command:

	g/RE/p

which meant to globally search for a Regular Expression and print each
occurance.  As for the other "greps", there is:

	fgrep - "fixed-string grep": grep optimized for fixed strings
		instead of regular expressions. 

	egrep - "extended grep": grep with full regular expression
		parsing instead of just the REs allowed in ed.

	-- Tim Olson
	Advanced Micro Devices
	(tim@amd.com)