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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Searching large file
Message-ID: <9338@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 30 Aug 90 00:34:02 GMT
References: <1990Aug29.003742.16051@pegasus.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 20

In article <1990Aug29.003742.16051@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:
: I need to search a large file or two for a text string.  What is the
: fastest way to search a large file for the first occurance of some
: random string and return its location?

Something like this, assuming you feed it real filenames.  As a filter, you'd
have to keep track of position yourself.

#!/usr/bin/perl
$text = shift;
$text =~ s/(\W)/\\$1/g;
eval <<EOF;
    while (<>) {
	print("\$ARGV: pos ", tell(ARGV)-length, "\\n"),close ARGV if /$text/;
    }
EOF

In a little while I'll have the o modifier be as fast, but not yet.

Larry