ack is a tiny perl script that you can simply wget and add to your path. I hear what you are saying, and I think that it applies to a lot of utilities, but not

ack is a tiny perl script that you can simply wget and add to your path. I hear what you are saying, and I think that it applies to a lot of utilities, but not ack. Imho ack is so much better than grep that it is worth the hassle of having to install it every now and then.