> GNU awk is a nice piece of software. The core of > GNU grep is very well written even if the surrounding > utility has been embellished a bit too much. Groff is
when mike wrote it, gnu grep was the best thing one could get if one wasn't at the labs. since brucee started this, i was in the room when it was written. or at least, one day in the science center mike was explaining the algorithm and he said something to the effect of, oops. he ran off to a h29 terminal, fixed the bug, confirmed it with the old executable, recompiled, and confirmed the fix. unfortunately, the last i checked, gnu grep mallocs for each byte of input when using a utf-8 locale. i even submitted a patch for this, but i don't think the current maintainers understood why that's a problem. anyway, i think you know why we paint with a broad brush. when you love well and simply written software, gnu's just going to make you a bit cranky. even if gnu * has a well-written core, the layers of crunchy bits make them difficult to understand, difficult to read, and wickedly difficult to fix. at least that's my experience. - erik
