Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> __/ [John Bokma] on Friday 21 October 2005 06:27 \__
>
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> I have once seen (and briefly used) a bloated front-end to GREP for
>>> Win- dows.
>>
>> grep, I think you mean sed. (Grep is like find).
>
> I typically think of fgrep as find and its relatives, only more
> powerful. You're right in spotting an inconsistency there, but GREP
> is indeed what the front-end took advantage of and it was capable
> of achieving the de- sired effect.
That's quite odd, since grep can't modify files afaik (unless you
overwrite the input with the output of grep). OTOH, I don't know all the
magic of the entire grep family :-)
> When I get to think of it all again (not the first time), it's
> worrying to see what GNU/Linux can do to commerical software once it
> is made popular. All of these $10-100 tools will no longer be
> necessary.
Since you can download & install all those nice GNU tools for ages on
Windows [1], and it's not happening (do to commercial s/w), it's not
happening. Moreover, those tools work in a CLI. My mom is not going to
understand that :-) And I think my partner is not going to use it, if
there is a freeware Windows alternative that works with a GUI, even if
it means she has to click 50 times, instead of typing 2 words.
> I sometimes ne- glect to remember how much money it saves
and often how much time it wastes, especially if you want it only a few
times. I really shiver at the thought to explain to someone the use of
find, sed, etc. to do something that's just a few clicks and key strokes
in TextPad.
> or how much functionality it of- fers that otherwise I could not
> afford or would not bother to spend on.
True for people who have a lot of spare time, but if you run a business:
time is money. Also, if all your customers use A, and you insist on
running B, and have to convert a lot to/from A, you are fighting an
uphill battle. I know some people love that, but every minute wasted on
converting stuff, is losing time that could be spent on a project, and
gives a lot of frustration. Worse, if one converts to A, send it to the
customer, and the customer, using B, can not use it because the program
on A is "an alternative", and not a real alternative, you waste and your
own time, and that of the customer.
Doing everything yourself is cool if it's a hobby, and you want to
learn. If you run your business, and in the end you are the system
administrator, the in-house tool developer, the bookkeeper, the
coffeemaker, the carpenter (desk), and the device driver hacker, well,
uhm, when do you work?
> Sourceforge and Freshmeat
> show that nowadays, even custom-built system no longer require much
> work.
What custom built systems? You lost me a bit. If you mean that one can
add some OS tools to Windows, that has been possible for ages, and ages.
But people who try to convert Windows to a kind of Linux (cygwin, etc.)
end often up with a cripled inbetween. Moreover, when you have to work
on site (with Windows) for some reason, you're lost.
> This can lead to redundancy.
it can also lead to improductivity, lost customers, and a lot of stress.
[1] http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ (older)
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