Plan9 grep is competitive in my simple test, often faster. It is also immune from the pathological data that will kill GNU grep - see http://swtch.com/~rsc/rege

Plan9 grep is competitive in my simple test, often faster. It is also immune from the pathological data that will kill GNU grep - see http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/ http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/ and the BUGS section of your local GNU grep #!/usr/local/plan9/bin/rc fn 9grep { /usr/local/plan9/bin/grep '2010-[0-9][0-9]-23 02:01:57' /home/maht/lighttpd.error.log > /dev/null } fn ggrep { /usr/bin/grep '2010-[0-9][0-9]-23 02:01:57' /home/maht/lighttpd.error.log > /dev/null } fn mgrep { /usr/bin/grep -mmap '2010-[0-9][0-9]-23 02:01:57' /home/maht/lighttpd.error.log > /dev/null } switch($1) { case -9 9grep case -g ggrep case -m mgrep case * ls -l /home/maht/lighttpd.error.log time /tmp/gtest -9 time /tmp/gtest -g time /tmp/gtest -m } /tmp/gtest -rw-r--r-- 1 www wheel 1113325534 Aug 23 18:51 /home/maht/lighttpd.error.log 23.67 real 3.88 user 3.74 sys 24.28 real 0.63 user 3.89 sys 23.09 real 0.56 user 3.87 sys