Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 22 Jun 2003 11:41:05 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Sean Farley <sean-freebsd@farley.org>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Replacing GNU grep revisited
Message-ID:  <20030622092848.R28123@thor.farley.org>
In-Reply-To: <20030622005852.GB59673@HAL9000.homeunix.com>
References:  <20030621103502.K18572@thor.farley.org> <20030622005852.GB59673@HAL9000.homeunix.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, David Schultz wrote:

> 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.

Let me clarify.  As far as I have been able to find out, the big
hold-out on not considering FreeGrep was that it was too slow.  I got
the time to be comparable.

Reasons to consider for switching:
1. GNU's grep -r option "is broken" according to the following post.
   The only thing I have noticed is that FreeGrep has more options for
   controlling how symbolic links are traversed.
   http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&selm=xzp7kchblor.fsf_flood.ping.uio.no%40ns.sol.net

2. GNU's grep is using libgnuregex.  The speed-up by dds@ would not be
   felt?

3. FreeGrep gives one less thing for zealots to complain about.  :)

Sean
-----------------------
sean-freebsd@farley.org



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030622092848.R28123>