[H-GEN] ASCII Characters

[Paul Gearon]

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Trent WADDINGTON wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, James McPherson - PTS Engineer wrote:
>>Sure, but you missed the point. Tao was referring to a previous
>>post which had
>>
>>cat file | strings
> 
> Which is the correct way.

Seems like a gratuitous use of "cat" to me.

What's wrong with:

strings < file

???

Why is is necessary to run a whole other process to get the shell to put 
the contents of a file on stdin when the shell has this feature built in?

>>rather than just
>>
>>strings file
> 
> 
> Which is an unnecessary feature of strings.

I agree here.

> Grep was the next to fall.  Why in the
> world does grep take filenames?  Well, the dark side is seductive.  If
> grep knows what files it is looking for patterns in it can print the name
> of the file before matches.  This can be quite useful.  It's even possible
> to grep -l, which does nothing but print the name of the file in which the
> match is found.

Not sure if I'd say that "Grep was the next to fall", though I see your 
point.  IMNSHO, finding a line in a stream and finding a file which 
contains a string are 2 separate operations (at least, they are for me). 
  It seems to me that grep has been overloaded (to use C++ parlance) to 
do both.  Both operations are needed, but if unix philosophy were 
followed correctly [1] then perhaps they shouldn't have been built into 
the same command.  It doesn't really bother me.  :-)

[1] each tool does one simple job, and does it well.

-- 
Regards,
Paul Gearon

Software Engineer                Telephone:   +61 7 3876 2188
Plugged In Software              Fax:         +61 7 3876 4899
http://www.PIsoftware.com        PGP Key available via finger

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam.
(Translation from latin: "I have a catapult. Give me all the money,
or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.")



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