I hadn't pursued it further than seeing that it was added in an 1978 commit. Looking at it further, there are a few answers at https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermai

I hadn't pursued it further than seeing that it was added in an 1978 commit. Looking at it further, there are a few answers at https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-January/019955.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-January/019955.h... > 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 I can verify that neither cut nor past were in PWB 1: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=PWB1 https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=PWB1 > Also "127" was the internal department number for the Computer Science Research group at Bell Labs where UNIX originated