[COFF] Re: Awk, not Kaw?

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 7:30 PM Stuff Received <stuff@riddermarkfarm.ca> wrote:
> As I was (re)reading Bentley's "More Programming Pearls", I saw the
> following in Sect. 2.6, Further Reading: "Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger
> designed and built the original Awk language in 1977. (Whatever you do,
> don't permute the initials of their last names!)"
>
> The exclamation mark seems to indicate a background story.  Anyone know it?

I once asked Aho about this when I was a student (his
compilers class was one of the few CS courses I took).
He said they would meet in a room and people would
walk by and stick their heads in and say, "AWK! AWK!
AWK!" as a kind of joke, and the name came from that.

`akw` seems like the most promising alternative, for
no other reason than that the initials are alphabetized.
`kaw` feels a bit silly, sounding like the noise that a
crow makes.

I suspect "awk" was the closest to pronounceable
without seeming unduly goofy.

        - Dan C.