Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> writes: I know this thread is almost 5 years old, I came across it searching for something else But as no one could answer these questions back then, I can. GWRL stands for Gottfried W. R. Luderer, the author of cut(1) and paste(1), probably around 1978. Those came either from PWB or USG, as he worked with, or for, Berkley Tague. Thus they made their way into AT&T commercial UNIX, first into System III and the into System V, and that's why they are missing from early BSD releases as they didn't get into Research UNIX until the 8th Edition. Also "127" was the internal department number for the Computer Science Research group at Bell Labs where UNIX originated Dr. Luderer co-authored this paper in the orginal 1978 BSTJ on UNIX -- https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Papers/BSTJ/bstj57-6-2201.pdf I knew Dr. Luderer and he was even kind enough to arrange for me stay with his relatives for a few days in Braunschweig, West Germany (correct county name for the time) on my first trip to Europe many decades ago. But haven't had contact nor even thought of him forever until I saw his initials. I also briefly worked for Berk when he was the department head for 45263 in Whippany Bell Labs before moving to Murray Hill. And doing a quick search for him, it looks like he wrote and autobiograhy, which I am now going to have to purchase http://www.lulu.com/shop/gottfried-luderer/go-west-young-german/paperback/p… -Brian