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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!karl
From: karl@ima.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: egrep, fgrep, grep
Message-ID: <548@ima.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Apr-87 14:30:02 EST
Article-I.D.: ima.548
Posted: Sun Apr 19 14:30:02 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 21:35:24 EST
References: <276@wolf.UUCP> <741@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ISC.COM.UUCP (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 12
Summary: sometimes only vanilla grep will work

In article <741@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mcgill-vision!mouse (der Mouse) writes:
>In fact, of the above three there is no reason to use grep ...

(a) in versions of unix where RE matching includes \{m,n\}, grep has it and
egrep doesn't.  likewise, egrep has no way (other than enumeration) to match,
say, a double letter, which grep can do with the pattern '\([a-z]\)\1'.

(b) the pattern '^........foo' is syntactically acceptable to egrep, but will
almost certainly run out of space.  grep handles it nicely.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
(i wish vanilla grep would accept the fgrep/egrep semantics of newline!)