grep — the indispensable Unix search tool — didn’t start life as a standalone command. Ken Thompson lifted it wholesale from ed, the original Unix line editor, where g/re/p meant “globally search for a regular expression and print matching lines.” The command proved so useful that Thompson wrapped it in its own binary overnight. Ed, meanwhile, faded into obscurity — remembered today mostly by people who accidentally launch it, can’t figure out how to quit, and have to kill the terminal in shame. grep‘s descendants (egrep, fgrep, ripgrep) now populate virtually every operating system on the planet. Ed remains unavailable for comment.
