SPUG: Any grep's lack \b functionality?

Tim Maher tim at consultix-inc.com
Sun Oct 5 12:53:23 CDT 2003


In my upcoming book, I invest a lot of time pointing out the
limitations of the original UNIX utilities, praising their
GNU counterparts, and showing what Perl can do better than
either of them.

I know the original UNIX grep (and egrep) didn't have a
"word-boundary" metacharacter, and I remember that was still
true on at least some Unices (such as Solaris 2.5.1) by around 1996.

But I don't really know the details of all the various
contemporary Unices, as I only have access to Solaris 2.5.1 and
9. in my office.

I'd like to think that all versions based on SVR4 would have
identical utilities, but I know Sun likes to tweak things to "add
value" (e.g., its Solaris 9.0 has not one but /two/ word-boundary
enabled greps), and I've often been burned by finding that HP
systems have the most archaic variations of whatever its
competitors offer.

So one question I'd like help answering is:

1) Is any fairly contemporary version of UNIX missing a grep,
   egrep, or sed that supports a word boundary metacharacter?
   (\b, \<, whatever)

But the more general question that really interests me is:

2) Does anybody know where I can find a detailed list of the
   capabilities of each of the UNIX utilities (grep, sed, sort,
   tail, etc.) as they're provided by different Unices?

TIA,

-Tim
*------------------------------------------------------------*
| Tim Maher (206) 781-UNIX  (866) DOC-PERL  (866) DOC-UNIX   |
| tim(AT)Consultix-Inc.Com  TeachMeUnix.Com  TeachMePerl.Com |
*+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-*
|  Watch for my Book: "Minimal Perl for Shell Programmers"   |
*------------------------------------------------------------*



More information about the spug-list mailing list