[svlug] Re: *nix command names

[Romain Kang]

There's no need for the speculative answers that have been appearing.
For anyone interested in these things, a little time with the FAQs
will be well spent.

On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 09:17:40AM -0700, Akbar Ahmed wrote:
> 1. why is grep named grep
> I may be way off, but I was thinking that maybe it
> stands for Gnu REgular Expressions? Or maybe not?

>From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part1/ :

      grep = "Global Regular Expression Print"
 
        grep comes from the ed command to print all lines matching a
        certain pattern
 
                    g/re/p
 
        where "re" is a "regular expression".

> 2. What does the "rc" stand for in bashrc, initrc?

Op. cit.:

      rc (as in ".cshrc" or "/etc/rc") = "RunCom"

        "rc" derives from "runcom", from the MIT CTSS system, ca. 1965.

            'There was a facility that would execute a bunch of
            commands stored in a file; it was called "runcom" for "run
            commands", and the file began to be called "a runcom."

            "rc" in Unix is a fossil from that usage.'
       
        Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie, as told to Vicki Brown

        "rc" is also the name of the shell from the new Plan 9
        operating system.