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History of `awk' and `gawk'
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                   Recipe For A Programming Language

          1 part  `egrep'   1 part  `snobol'
          2 parts `ed'      3 parts C

     Blend all parts well using `lex' and `yacc'.  Document minimally
     and release.

     After eight years, add another part `egrep' and two more parts C.
     Document very well and release.

   The name `awk' comes from the initials of its designers: Alfred V.
Aho, Peter J. Weinberger and Brian W. Kernighan.  The original version
of `awk' was written in 1977 at AT&T Bell Laboratories.  In 1985, a new
version made the programming language more powerful, introducing
user-defined functions, multiple input streams, and computed regular
expressions.  This new version became widely available with Unix System
V Release 3.1 (SVR3.1).  The version in SVR4 added some new features
and cleaned up the behavior in some of the "dark corners" of the
language.  The specification for `awk' in the POSIX Command Language
and Utilities standard further clarified the language.  Both the `gawk'
designers and the original Bell Laboratories `awk' designers provided
feedback for the POSIX specification.

   Paul Rubin wrote the GNU implementation, `gawk', in 1986.  Jay
Fenlason completed it, with advice from Richard Stallman.  John Woods
contributed parts of the code as well.  In 1988 and 1989, David
Trueman, with help from me, thoroughly reworked `gawk' for compatibility
with the newer `awk'.  Circa 1995, I became the primary maintainer.
Current development focuses on bug fixes, performance improvements,
standards compliance, and occasionally, new features.

   In May of 1997, Ju"rgen Kahrs felt the need for network access from
`awk', and with a little help from me, set about adding features to do
this for `gawk'.  At that time, he also wrote the bulk of `TCP/IP
Internetworking with `gawk'' (a separate document, available as part of
the `gawk' distribution).  His code finally became part of the main
`gawk' distribution with `gawk' version 3.1.

   Note: Major Contributors to `gawk', for a complete
list of those who made important contributions to `gawk'.