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Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools

Posted by timothy on from the now-with-raisins dept.

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."

10 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Strange names by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    1. Re:Strange names by ripler · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    2. Re:Strange names by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    3. Re:Strange names by toadlife · · Score: 4, Funny

      "I have only been able to come up with one algorithm for creating Unix command names: think of a good English word to describe what you want to do, then think of an obscure near- or partial-synonym, throw away all the vowels, arbitrarily shorten what's left, and then, finally, as a sop to the literate programmer, maybe reinsert one of the missing vowels."

      Rachel Padman

      --
      I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    4. Re:Strange names by TheSpoom · · Score: 1, Funny

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

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    5. Re:Strange names by jd · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    6. Re:Strange names by Longjmp · · Score: 1, Funny

      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"

      ;-)

      --
      There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
    7. Re:Strange names by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    8. Re:Strange names by rk · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  2. Re:Microsoft Ad by Mars+Saxman · · Score: 1, Funny

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