grep isn't what you think it means...

LaurieWired July 1, 2025
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Ever wonder why your favorite UNIX command is called "grep"? And what the heck does it have to do with the Founding Fathers? Join me as we discuss linguistics research, Bell Labs, the American Revolution, and how it all resulted in the linux tool we all depend upon! --- Timestamps 00:00 The Phone Call that Created grep 01:05 Linguistic fingerprinting 02:55 A Historical Mystery... 05:00 PDP-7 Limitations 07:40 Ken Thompson's Overnight Hack 10:27 Essential Tool or Unix Junk? --- Follow LaurieWired on Social Media: ►https://linktr.ee/lauriewired --- Works Cited: Unix: An Oral History (Princeton): https://web.archive.org/web/20200803035038/https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/finalhis.htm The Federalist Papers (Library of Congress): https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text The History of grep (Rualthanzauva): https://medium.com/@rualthanzauva/grep-was-a-private-command-of-mine-for-quite-a-while-before-i-made-it-public-ken-thompson-a40e24a5ef48

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