Re: [TUHS] grep

[George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org>]

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
>