If you wanted to do this with python: cat beef.txt | grep "lasagna" | sort -n | uniq The correct way would seem to be to write four python programs, named pca

If you wanted to do this with python: cat beef.txt | grep "lasagna" | sort -n | uniq The correct way would seem to be to write four python programs, named pcat, pgrep, psort, and puniq, and then pipe the output of one program to the other program. The only advantage would be that it should be able to work in any operating system with a python environment. Ideally each program would have the same functionality and resilience as the original bash programs. The argparse module (for accepting the same options at the command line as the origals) and pathlib module (for portability to Windows as well as Linux and Mac) would be useful. Now, is it really worth the trouble of doing this? Possibly, at least as part of an educational Python program. Implementing all of grep's functionality would be a big job, however.