Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: net.unix,net.bugs.usg Subject: Re: fgrep (isn't) Message-ID: <5785@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 12:37:48 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.5785 Posted: Fri Jul 12 12:37:48 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 12:37:48 EDT References: <495@unisoft.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 11 > Notice that plain old grep is the fastest of all, and fgrep is the slowest! Sigh, it is well-known that fgrep is slow when searching for a single string. You forgot to test egrep, which is well-known to be the fastest for the trivial case. Where fgrep makes a difference is when you want to search for a number of strings simultaneously. Grep can't do that at all, and egrep hits pattern-complexity limits quickly. Fgrep really screams along in this case. I haven't tested bgrep et al yet. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry