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From: rcodi@yabbie.rmit.oz (Ian Donaldson)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: perl finds bug in fgrep(1)!
Message-ID: <842@yabbie.rmit.oz>
Date: 26 Aug 88 07:43:17 GMT
References: <458@tauros.UUCP>
Organization: RMIT Comm & Elec Eng, Melbourne, Australia.
Lines: 20

From article <458@tauros.UUCP>, by treval@tauros.UUCP (Trevor Luker):
> 	try the following (On NCR Tower SysV.2):-
> 
> 	$ ps -ef | grep xxxxxx
> Gives->	treval  8911  8910  4 13:12:01 X00t  0:00 grep xxxxxx
> 	$ ps -ef | fgrep xxxxxx
> Gives->	$
> 
> 
> 	Is this a related problem to the grep(1) bug? 

No, no bugs here at all.

Its a race condition: fgrep doesn't get started by the shell until
ps does, so ps sometimes completes before fgrep is started.

If you repeat your second example a few times you will eventually see
some output.

Ian D