From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Oct 4 01:50:18 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA05296 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 01:50:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from abc.xyz.net (froggy.anchorage.ptialaska.net [208.151.119.238]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA05289 for ; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 01:50:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from groggy@iname.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by abc.xyz.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA01224; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 00:50:33 -0800 (AKDT) (envelope-from groggy@iname.com) Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 00:50:33 -0800 (AKDT) From: Steve Howe X-Sender: abc@abc.xyz.net To: Ben Smithurst cc: "Alain G. Fabry" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Printing out man pages In-Reply-To: <19981003145142.A7999@scientia.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > #!/usr/bin/sed -f > > # > > # m2a -- Man to Ascii filter. > > > > s/.//g > Why bother, when `col -b' does that for you? i didn't know "col" was more efficient than "sed". col is half the size of sed, and less complex, so you are probably correct that it is more "efficient" in a physical sense. however, sed is a better tool all around, and has a greater variety of uses, so it may be more efficient in a realistic sense for a new user to become familiar with sed. if the question applies to why is it in a shell script, the answer is that users of FreeBSD all have different uses for the OS. and if my needs don't require my to learn every xyz utility and all their options, my effiency is increased by placing commonly used functions in scripts so i don't have to remember all the details. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message