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Where GREP Came From - Computerphile

Computerphile · interview · Watch on YouTube

History of computingTesting, debugging & developer tools

What it is

Brian Kernighan explains how grep came to be, written overnight by Ken Thompson, and how it got its name from the ed command g/re/p. He also covers the lineage from QED to ed that led to it.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters point to it as a short, charming first-hand account of Unix history from someone who was there.

  • 1 people recommended it
  • 1 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2020

What HN commenters said

  1. “My favourite BWK video is about grep.”

    Kernighan on grep's origins, with a memorable closing line

    peterburkimsher, 2020-11 · Strong recommendation · in “The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: grep, unix, kernighan, ed, text editors

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