Where GREP Came From - Computerphile
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.
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.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec peterburkimsher · 2020-11 · on “The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan”
My favourite BWK video is about grep. [this video] The last part is very quotable: "They had one grave disadvantage, none of them were Ken Thompson"
Recommends peterburkimsher · 2020-11 · on “The State of the Awk”
Slightly off-topic, but Brian Kernighan has a great video about the origins of grep. If you know anything similar for awk, I'd enjoy watching it! [this video]
Cites jmts · 2018-07 · on “Where grep came from [video]”
From the video [1]: "The UNIX text editor was called 'eee-dee' - it's not pronounced 'ed', at least by those in the know - it's pronounced 'eee-dee'. This was written by Ken Thompson, and I think it was basically a stripped down version of an editor called QED" [1] [this video]
Cites throw0101a · 2020-09 · on “A Requiem for a Dying Operating System (1994)”
"Where GREP Came From" by Brian Kernighan from Computerphile: * [this video] For those unfamiliar, Kernighan is the "K" in K&R C and the "K" in AWK: * [LINK]