Many thanks for all the much needed contributions to society as a whole. I did have one feature to request for wc, which I think would be highly complementary to grep’s -q flag. It would be really cool if wc could have a -q flag as well, which could return matches within a predefined threshold as the exit code itself. So for example, if I wrote ‘wc -l -q’ at the end of a pipe, then no output would be returned, but the exit code would return a 3 if three lines were found. I understand there’s quite a bit more lifting to add -q to wc than to grep considering the extra bounds check requirement and verifying that only one of the corresponding wc flags are chosen, but I can dream at least.
Forgive the intrusion, gentleman. I just love the grep -q flag, maybe a little too much. And as much as computing doesn’t always offer this, I find it extremely satisfying as a computer scientist and a mathematician when tools have parallel applications. Thanks again for everything. -Alex Boese 202-436-9888