Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools

itwbennett writes "At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference being held this week in Boston, two Dartmouth computer scientists presented variants of the grep and diff Unix command line utilities that can handle more complex types of data. The new programs, called Context-Free Grep and Hierarchical Diff, will provide the ability to parse blocks of data rather than single lines. The research has been funded in part by Google and the U.S. Energy Department."

Strange names

[gnasher719]

Space characters in the name of a Unix command line tool is asking for trouble.

Re:Strange names

[ripler]

Next thing you know we'll have CSIgrep. (enhance enhance enhance grep)

Re:Strange names

[Anne Thwacks]

CSIgrep would take 30 mins to get the result! (With ad breaks)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Microsoft Ad

[Mars Saxman]

That's great for all fifty people who use Powershell.

Re:Strange names

[TheSpoom]

Bonus points if the command is an inscrutable acronym that refers to itself.

Re:Strange names

[jd]

You have to figure in two's complement notation. If it's sufficiently counter-intuitive, the sign bit flips over and it becomes totally intuitive.

Re:Strange names

[Longjmp]

I'd just say woosh, but anyway:
I basically grew up with PDP-11 and then VAXen running VMS (thanks to my father).
I think I was first "exposed" to unix roughly 25 years ago, but I still think, the first command I entered AND returned some kind of result was "man this is plain shit"

;-)

Re:Strange names

[93 Escort Wagon]

Just wait until Microsoft sees your post and we'll have eeegrep.

No, I expect they'd call it grep#. And when Apple forks their own version, it'll be objective grep.

Re:Strange names

[rk]

Unix is user-friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.