From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 21 17:59:06 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4E2C37B401 for ; Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:59:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from HAL9000.homeunix.com (ip114.bella-vista.sfo.interquest.net [66.199.86.114]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DE8A43F75 for ; Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:59:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from HAL9000.homeunix.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by HAL9000.homeunix.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h5M0wsJa059837; Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:58:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: (from das@localhost) by HAL9000.homeunix.com (8.12.9/8.12.9/Submit) id h5M0wrMT059836; Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:58:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.ORG) Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:58:53 -0700 From: David Schultz To: Sean Farley Message-ID: <20030622005852.GB59673@HAL9000.homeunix.com> Mail-Followup-To: Sean Farley , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org References: <20030621103502.K18572@thor.farley.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii:iso-8859-1" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <20030621103502.K18572@thor.farley.org> cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Replacing GNU grep revisited X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:59:07 -0000 On Sat, Jun 21, 2003, Sean Farley wrote: > In January, Pedro Giffuni started a thread about replacing GNU's grep in > the system. Interestingly, I did not know about the grep thread on > hackers until later. James Howard had interjected in February with > mention that he had gotten patches to speed up freegrep. I had sent him > those patches in late January, but I have not heard from him since. > Hopefully, he is OK and just busy. > > I have placed the patches up on Geocities¹ for others to try out. They > get freegrep fairly close to the performance of GNU's grep. Also > included is a small patch to regex to squeak a bit more performance out > of it, but I am not certain if it actually helps or not. > > BTW, Postgres is using a newer version of the regex library--swiped from > TCL--that FreeBSD uses. It supports multibyte characters. Is it time > for an update? dds@ has expressed some interest in compiling the FSMs for regexps into native code, which would make it blazingly fast. See cvs-all@. As a practical matter, there are only a couple of zealots who care what kind of license grep is under, so replacing GNU grep with something that's ``almost as good as GNU grep'' is a regression IMO. If we were talking about a kernel module or library, of course, that would be a different matter.