Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:9020 comp.unix.questions:7347
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!omepd!andyc
From: andyc@omepd (T. Andrew Crump)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: grep replacement
Message-ID: <3503@omepd>
Date: 31 May 88 16:03:32 GMT
References: <7882@alice.UUCP> <5630@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <6866@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <4524@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> <1036@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU>
Reply-To: andyc@omepd.UUCP (T. Andrew Crump)
Organization: Intel Corp., Jones Farm
Lines: 14

In article <1036@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> wyatt@cfa.harvard.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes:

>> There have been times when I wanted a grep that would print out the
>> first occurrence and then stop.

   >
   >grep '(your_pattern_here)' | head -1

Yes, but it forces grep to search a whole file, when what you may have wanted
was at the beginning.  This is inefficient if the "file" is large.

A more general version of this request would be a parameter that would restrict
grep to n or less occurrences, maybe 'grep -N #'.

-- Andy Crump