* Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 [not found] <mailman.3.1531879201.24006.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> @ 2018-07-18 11:39 ` Doug McIlroy 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman 2018-07-18 14:41 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 arnold 0 siblings, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Doug McIlroy @ 2018-07-18 11:39 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs Arnold was clerly on the Unix Room wavelength. ^All those two-letter commands were spelled out in conversation, even m-v. The pronunciation of rmdir was hybrid: r-m-dir. But when one talked about an action--not a command per se--verbs would be used: move or copy a file, list a directory. The famous exception is grep, which became a verb. There was no snappy ready-made verb that covered all the aspects of its use: search for mentions in one file, find files that mention, look for patterns, filter data, check for malformed data, ... The verb had two idiomatic variants, "grep for" and "grep out". Doug ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 2018-07-18 11:39 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 Doug McIlroy @ 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman 2018-07-18 16:13 ` [TUHS] grep William Cheswick 2018-07-19 2:50 ` [TUHS] Grep (was: TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12) Greg 'groggy' Lehey 2018-07-18 14:41 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 arnold 1 sibling, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: John P. Linderman @ 2018-07-18 13:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Doug McIlroy; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 826 bytes --] "Grep" as a verb expanded beyond files. I recall a friend saying they were "grepping for their keys on the dresser". On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 7:39 AM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote: > Arnold was clerly on the Unix Room wavelength. ^All those two-letter > commands were spelled out in conversation, even m-v. The pronunciation > of rmdir was hybrid: r-m-dir. But when one talked about an action--not > a command per se--verbs would be used: move or copy a file, list > a directory. The famous exception is grep, which became a verb. There > was no snappy ready-made verb that covered all the aspects of its use: > search for mentions in one file, find files that mention, look for > patterns, filter data, check for malformed data, ... The verb had > two idiomatic variants, "grep for" and "grep out". > > Doug > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1308 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] grep 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman @ 2018-07-18 16:13 ` William Cheswick 2018-07-18 16:25 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-07-19 2:50 ` [TUHS] Grep (was: TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12) Greg 'groggy' Lehey 1 sibling, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: William Cheswick @ 2018-07-18 16:13 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: The Unix Heritage Society Marion Harris gave a talk at 1985 Portland (Fireworks and Salmon) Usenix about the unapologetic use of such verbs. Grep uses the “gr” as in grasp, grope, grab, etc, similar to the “sl” in slither, slider, sleek, etc. She gave a linguistic term for such things, and I remember a word like “sythesim”, but that’s not it. ches ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] grep 2018-07-18 16:13 ` [TUHS] grep William Cheswick @ 2018-07-18 16:25 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-07-18 17:13 ` George Michaelson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2018-07-18 16:25 UTC (permalink / raw) To: William Cheswick; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 12:13:08PM -0400, William Cheswick wrote: > Marion Harris gave a talk at 1985 Portland (Fireworks and Salmon) > Usenix about the unapologetic use of such verbs. > Grep uses the “gr” as in grasp, grope, grab, etc, similar to the > “sl” in slither, slider, sleek, etc. She gave a linguistic term > for such things, and I remember a word like “sythesim”, but that’s > not it. > > ches > I think it's probably "phonestheme" as defined by Firth in "The Tongues of Men & Speech." khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] grep 2018-07-18 16:25 ` Kurt H Maier @ 2018-07-18 17:13 ` George Michaelson 2018-07-18 17:35 ` Bakul Shah 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2018-07-18 17:13 UTC (permalink / raw) To: William Cheswick, The Unix Heritage Society I was always told g/re/p as in g(lobally) apply r(egular) e(xpression) and p(rint) was a backronym which reflected the regex commonalities of sed/awk/grep/ed/ex/vi (ok, the latter two of course eggregiously offend because its Bill Joy exoticism, but I think by now we can accept some of the pauline epistles have later authors and are still held to be useful... I like the linguistic moment here. AWKward language? No. Not at all. sqwawk came to mind. and roff, as a simpler runoff, also seems to find how people take english and mogrify it to make new things. -G On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 12:25 PM, Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 12:13:08PM -0400, William Cheswick wrote: >> Marion Harris gave a talk at 1985 Portland (Fireworks and Salmon) >> Usenix about the unapologetic use of such verbs. >> Grep uses the “gr” as in grasp, grope, grab, etc, similar to the >> “sl” in slither, slider, sleek, etc. She gave a linguistic term >> for such things, and I remember a word like “sythesim”, but that’s >> not it. >> >> ches >> > > I think it's probably "phonestheme" as defined by Firth in "The > Tongues of Men & Speech." > > khm > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] grep 2018-07-18 17:13 ` George Michaelson @ 2018-07-18 17:35 ` Bakul Shah 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Bakul Shah @ 2018-07-18 17:35 UTC (permalink / raw) To: George Michaelson; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:13:52 -0400 George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote: George Michaelson writes: > I was always told g/re/p as in g(lobally) apply r(egular) e(xpression) > and p(rint) was a backronym which reflected the regex commonalities of > sed/awk/grep/ed/ex/vi (ok, the latter two of course eggregiously > offend because its Bill Joy exoticism, but I think by now we can > accept some of the pauline epistles have later authors and are still > held to be useful... Here Brian Kernighan tells the story of how grep came about. I love how he ends the story! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfOnGZUZDk ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Grep (was: TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12) 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman 2018-07-18 16:13 ` [TUHS] grep William Cheswick @ 2018-07-19 2:50 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2018-07-19 2:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: John P. Linderman; +Cc: The Unix Heritage Society [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1270 bytes --] On Wednesday, 18 July 2018 at 9:47:44 -0400, John P. Linderman wrote: > "Grep" as a verb expanded beyond files. I recall a friend saying they were > "grepping for their keys on the dresser". It's interesting to note that the Oxford English Dictionary has included grep`both as a noun and as a verb in 2003. From the noun: Etymology: < grep, a string of characters used as a command in the Unix operating system < the initial letters of global(ly) search regular expression print. The string g/re/p (where re stands for the regular expression searched for) was earlier used in a Unix text editor as the syntax for a sequence of commands performing the same operation as grep. Here your usage: 2. trans. slang (usually humorous). Of a person: to search; to scan visually. 1984 The Doctor's New Clothes in net.tv.drwho (Usenet newsgroup) 16 Aug. Peter Davison happened across his clothes while grepping the TARDIS for the Zero Room. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA [-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 2018-07-18 11:39 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 Doug McIlroy 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman @ 2018-07-18 14:41 ` arnold 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: arnold @ 2018-07-18 14:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs, doug Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote: > Arnold was clerly on the Unix Room wavelength. One of the nicest compliments I ever got. :-) Thanks, Arnold ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] grep @ 2018-07-19 15:07 Paul Winalski 2018-07-19 15:39 ` George Michaelson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2018-07-19 15:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: tuhs On 7/18/18, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote: > > The famous exception is grep, which became a verb. I think the similarity to "grab" and "grope" helped. > "grep for" and "grep out". "grep for" I'm familiar with. What does it mean to "grep out"? -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] grep 2018-07-19 15:07 [TUHS] grep Paul Winalski @ 2018-07-19 15:39 ` George Michaelson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: George Michaelson @ 2018-07-19 15:39 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Paul Winalski; +Cc: TUHS main list grep -v On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 11:07 AM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote: > On 7/18/18, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote: >> >> The famous exception is grep, which became a verb. > > I think the similarity to "grab" and "grope" helped. > >> "grep for" and "grep out". > > "grep for" I'm familiar with. What does it mean to "grep out"? > > -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2018-07-19 15:39 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <mailman.3.1531879201.24006.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> 2018-07-18 11:39 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 Doug McIlroy 2018-07-18 13:47 ` John P. Linderman 2018-07-18 16:13 ` [TUHS] grep William Cheswick 2018-07-18 16:25 ` Kurt H Maier 2018-07-18 17:13 ` George Michaelson 2018-07-18 17:35 ` Bakul Shah 2018-07-19 2:50 ` [TUHS] Grep (was: TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12) Greg 'groggy' Lehey 2018-07-18 14:41 ` [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 12 arnold 2018-07-19 15:07 [TUHS] grep Paul Winalski 2018-07-19 15:39 ` George Michaelson
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