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From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: grep replacement
Keywords: grep, nm, unix consistency
Message-ID: <56657@sun.uucp>
Date: 15 Jun 88 18:32:12 GMT
References: <7882@alice.UUCP> <5630@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <6866@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <7349@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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> grep -l is a tool which is supposed to tell me whether one or more files
> contain a string.

No, it isn't.  "grep -l" is a tool that is supposed to tell you whether one or
more *text* files contain a string; if your file doesn't happen to contain
newlines at least every N characters or so, too bad.  If you want to improve
this situation by writing a "grep" that doesn't have this restriction, feel
free.

> The fact that it refuses to do so for a class of magic files is a
> gratuitous violation of the unix paradigm.

"ed is a tool that is supposed to let me modify files.  The fact that it
refuses to do so for a class of magic files is a gratuitous violation of the
unix paradigm."  Sorry, but the fact that you can't normally use "ed" to patch
binaries doesn't bother me one bit.