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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