Thank you. This story comes up from time to time and I hate it. Knuth was asked to illustrate literate programming style, and he did so. The request was not "s

Thank you. This story comes up from time to time and I hate it. Knuth was asked to illustrate literate programming style, and he did so. The request was not "show us how to find the most frequently occurring words in a file." McIlroy's response would be fine for the latter and utterly useless for the former (and actual) request.