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by David Rood
except as noted.

Greppin' In A Nutshell

Lyrics by David Rood and Steve Boyd; Music by David Rood.

Story

One late night whilst chatting online with a friend of mine who works as a UNIX system administrator, we had one of those "That sounds like the title to a song" conversations, and out it came. After all, there is a shortage of touching love themes in the command-line world.

Somebody described the O'Reilly computer reference books as being "to a sysadmin what shoulder-length rubber gloves are to a veterinarian". The other joke in the last verse refers to some of the people involved in the creation of the language, though by no means all.

Lyrics

She was the girl down the street; I had a fort in the trees
She’d come over for peanuts and candy
We were only playing, we got caught in the rain
Just us and a computer in a big wooden box

We were greppin’ in a nutshell, working overtime for Ma Bell
Speaking in a language that was all our own
And we had no clue that in a decade or two
That language would be in every geek’s home

It came from our thoughts and though we never watched
Now we turn around, and look how it’s grown
More than one could make and around every care we’d take
It took on a life all its own

We were greppin’ in a nutshell, working overtime for Ma Bell
Speaking in a language that was all our own
And we had no clue that in a decade or two
That language would be in every geek’s home

Some may talk of sed
And some may promote awk
But as for me,
And as for she
We still prefer our own homebrew baby talk

You may eye-ma-gine the surprise that came to me
When I found it documented in a book by O’Reilley
It’s just as well, I thought, then "What the hell?"
Now it seems like everybody’s doing it

They’re all greppin’ in a nutshell, from Big Blue to the Baby Bells
Speaking in a language that was once all our own
Though it may sound Korn-y, it was Bourne of our Joy
And every time I "C" it, well I feel right at home

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