Subject: Re: i386 1.4Q hangs nonrandomly?
To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
From: R. C. Dowdeswell <elric@mabelode.imrryr.org>
List: current-users
Date: 01/28/2000 09:04:07
On 949078380 seconds since the Beginning of the UNIX epoch
Peter Seebach wrote:
>
>Not longest file, longest line.
>
>He's right; it's impossible for grep to do the right thing reading from a
>pipe without enough memory to store the longest line.  (After all, it has
>to hold the whole line until it's done, incase it matches something at the
>very end.)
>
>There may be cases when it can avoid this, but I think they're nugatory.

Well, a problem in my opinion is that:

$ grep -q foo /dev/zero
grep: memory exhausted

With -q grep should not have to store the whole line since it does not
need to output it.

 == Roland Dowdeswell                      http://www.Imrryr.ORG/~elric/  ==
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