[ILUG] new grep

[Padraig Brady]

kevin lyda wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 04:33:43PM +0000, Padraig Brady wrote:
> 
>>REPVIK OYVIND wrote:
>>
>>>I believe loads of options could be added to both sed and grep. But then it
>>>would no longer follow the KISS principle. That is in my opinion one of the
>>>things that makes *nix so great. 
>>>
>>>sed does it's stuff. Grep does it's stuff. It's as simple as that, no?
>>
>>Well that's exactly my point.
>>Basically all systems should have as high cohesion
>>and as low coupling as possible.
>>I think that sed/grep are quite cohesive
>>and therefore could be merged?
> 
> 
> uh...  i don't use grep to edit files, i use it to search them.  i don't
> use sed to search files, i use it to change them.

Why?

sed -n -e "/[0-9]/p" testfile

is the same as:

grep "[0-9]" testfile

   they're two separate
> activities.

With a common function of finding a pattern.

> grep provides a fast way to search files - and it's simple
> syntax reflects that.  sed has more complex syntax, but it's doing a
> more complex task.

I think it's as easy for someone to learn the p command
in sed, as a seperate grep command. That just takes a
minute or two. The hard bit is understanding the regular
expressions.

Padraig.