the many greps

[edhall%rand-unix at sri-unix.UUCP]

There are definitely still enough differences to require 3 greps.
For example, try comparing:

  egrep '....................................................................'

with:

  grep '....................................................................'

The grep will be much faster than the egrep.  This seems to be true for any
regular expression with a lot of wild card characters (i.e. `.''s).

Also, when you are looking for matches with a long list of words, you'll
find:

  fgrep -f list

much faster than:

  egrep -f list

(Alas, in both cases the maximum number of strings in `list' has a fairly
small limit--about 400 for fgrep, and substantially less for egrep.)

So, though I use egrep in about 85% of cases, I still find some use for
fgrep and plain ol' grep.

		-Ed Hall
		edhall at rand-unix        (ARPA)
		decvax!randvax!edhall   (UUCP)