Re: asm grep


"Herbert Kleebauer" <klee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4777D53C.A259F291@xxxxxxxxxxxx
A powerful tool is only powerful when used by
a power user, in the hands of a novice a simple tool is much more
productive.


I beg to differ. Simple tools are powerful in the hands of a power user,
but ineffective in the hands of a novice who needs preprogrammed powerful
options.

Before starting with the implementation a specification has
to be made. I think the first decision which has to be made is:
should the tool be used with text or binary files (it is maybe
better to use different tools and not combine it in one like
with grep).


In C, in which I've written many text utils, I always manipulate text files
as binary... I believe binary to be the best choice.

Supposedly you want a text search tool (otherwise the term
"line" doesn't make any sense). The next question is, which
features are absolutely necessary, which one are desirable
and which one are so rarely used so that they only make
the usage complicated without a notable practical improvement
for a novice user.

I was going to question in reply to one of Frank's posts whether line
numbers were really necessary. Most editors will display the line number.
As long as you're editing the matched file, one can have the editor search
for the matched text.

The next task is to separate the desirable features into
a group which easily can be implemented and a group which
would be to much effort to implement.


I already mentioned my preferred options: filename, case insensitive.
Wildcards, more DOS-ish, less RegEx would be my third choice. If Frank's
doing this it's time for him to collect a list, no? I get the feeling Frank
is attempting to recruit others, yes?

- findt only reads stdin and writes to stdout, no filename is
given. This way the OS is responsibly for correctly open
the files (eliminates the problem when using long file
names or file names with spaces in 16 bit DOS programs).
This way it is easier to make the utility OS independent.


Hmm, most interesting thing in this thread so far... Can an assembly grep
be small, fast, full featured, and compilable for both DOS and Linux?
Someone would probably have to do an in depth comparison of DOS api and
Linux int 0x80 syscalls... (I've been meaning too, haven't done so...)


Rod Pemberton

.

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