On most context involving "using grep", shell scripts, interactive shell, etc, it's nothing. 81 Vs 128 system calls on my laptop (just printing --version)

On most context involving "using grep", shell scripts, interactive shell, etc, it's nothing. 81 Vs 128 system calls on my laptop (just printing --version) $ strace -fc grep -E --version 2>&1 | tail -1 100.00 0.000000 0 81 3 total $ strace -fc egrep --version 2>&1 | tail -1 100.00 0.000000 0 128 6 total Measured with "time" 0m0.002s Vs 0m0.003s, always, testing 4 times each option. Most situations where it could be being used, probably are surrounded by much bigger optimizations to work on.