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From: jms@hcx.uucp (Michael Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Expansion of the acronym "grep"
Summary: Expansion of the acronym "grep"
Message-ID: <2555@cveg.uucp>
Date: 9 Jun 89 19:15:11 GMT
References: <25249@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8170003@hpfcdq.HP.COM> <883@nebulus.UUCP> <709@palladium.UUCP>
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Organization: College of Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
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In article <709@palladium.UUCP>, rsilvers@palladium.UUCP (rsilvers) writes:
> In article <883@nebulus.UUCP> ram@nebulus.UUCP (Richard Meesters) writes:
> >In article <8170003@hpfcdq.HP.COM>, benji@hpfcdq.HP.COM (Jeff Benjamin) writes:
> >> > What is the correct expansion of the acronym "grep"? I'm told that this

I heard a long time ago that the origin of the word grep was the following
old 'ed' command:

	g/re/p

where 'g' was a command meaning global (search through whole file),
're' stood for a regular expression, and 'p' meant print.  Basically,
this command accomplished the same thing (in the editor) that grep
accomplishes at the shell level.  If anyone can confirm this, I'd
definitely be interested to hear if it is correct.  I believe I read
this in an old UNIX manual.

	Michael Stanley