Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!rutgers!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!alice!andrew
From: andrew@alice.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: grep replacement
Summary: don't use our diff if you don't want to
Message-ID: <7990@alice.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 88 05:42:32 GMT
References: <16173@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 16



i am not proposing that the world uses a diff without context;
just our world. it is rarely used in our center and we don't use patch.
and despite large address spaces and huge machines, we still believe
in trying to eliminate crud that is essentially never used. crud that is
not paged in is still crud. just remember, i am not trying to make you use
our (contextless) diff.

the point about contexts is that it is something you can do in many different
places with the output from many commands. this is what suggests that it
be a separate tool. it doesn't have to subsume all context tasks;
perhaps diff output just doesn't fit the mold. and complaints about
greps of standard input indicate that you need to think about whether
the context tool can handle pipe inputs and if it can't be done, then
context greps of standrd input don't fit the mold either.