>>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen Masterman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Stephen> I guess I should use egrep! > >I don't know if it is true for current implementations but one of the >curiosities of early implementations of egrep was that, even though >it is more general than grep, it was usually faster than grep on >problems where they could both be used.
Well, under Debian we use GNU's version of the grep programs, and: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:richard$ ls -li /usr/bin/*grep 66907 -rwxrwxr-x 3 root root 61444 Mar 24 1995 /usr/bin/egrep 66907 -rwxrwxr-x 3 root root 61444 Mar 24 1995 /usr/bin/fgrep 66907 -rwxrwxr-x 3 root root 61444 Mar 24 1995 /usr/bin/grep 66825 -rwxrwxr-x 1 root root 1335 Mar 24 1995 /usr/bin/zgrep [EMAIL PROTECTED]:richard$ ...they're all the same file. So they perform identically, the syntax is just slightly different (RTFM for more information). I would be unsurprised if commerical UNIX implementations still have the properties you describe, however. -- Richard Kettlewell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/
