Customer Reviews

Grep Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This little book is everything a pocket reference should be. grep and egrep are not hard to use, but there are quite a few valid combinations of options, and this book pretty much covers them all. If you want to find expressions in one or more files, this is the tool to use. It's easy to forget everything available, so this book puts everything in one place for you. There's even a section on an option of grep that is only valid with PERL, so you may or may not have access to it. The following is the table of contents since it is not listed in the product description. One word of warning - if you don't already understand regular expressions this book won't teach it to you. It is indeed just a quick reference for concepts you should already know. The advanced tips and tricks section is the only exception to that rule and is itself worth the price of admission.

Chapter 1. grep Pocket Reference
Section 1.1. Introduction
Section 1.2. Conceptual Overview
Section 1.3. Introduction to Regular Expressions
Section 1.4. grep Basics
Section 1.5. Basic Regular Expressions (grep or grep -G)
Section 1.6. Extended Regular Expressions (egrep or grep -E)
Section 1.7. Fixed Strings (fgrep or grep -F)
Section 1.8. Perl-Style Regular Expressions (grep -P)
Section 1.9. Introduction to grep-Relevant Environment Variables
Section 1.10. Choosing Between grep Types and Performance Considerations
Section 1.11. Advanced Tips and Tricks with grep
Section 1.12. References

It has beyond what you will learn from Man pages of grep. Few examples will surely make you understand the power of grep command.

As a lifelong bibliophile, I can honestly say that few books come even remotely close to this one for usability and functionality.

i.e. for years I had thought that \r was just an acronym for \n, but this book disabused me of this, and much other nonsense.

There aren't enough superlatives in the dictionary!

I could not, very easily, live without it.

Mainly explained GNU version of GREP, which is most common version.
This pocket provides some example and explanation.
With this reference, I'm much more familiar with grep.
Grep also became one of my powerful tools.

I needed a book that would teach me REGEX and how better to use grep/fgrep, but without having to learn PERL and JAVA. (ie. Master Regular Expressions contains over half the data relevant to other languages.)

This "grep Pocket Reference" did a good job of explaining the grep options in tandem with the it's Manual Page. Although few, I thought the examples near the end were great. However, the examples seemed to be themed on personal private data searching rather then something more relevant to a computer users -- but they could easily be converted.

This EBook needs some corrections (a reprint including errata?) as it contains some grammar or run-on sentences which conflict and provide incorrect data. Also, there's a sentence in the book stating, in effect, it's OK or legal to use fgrep to search other peoples EMail. I'm no lawyer, but this doesn't sound correct. Again, those few sentences probably need a little rewording.

All in all, besides the fact it needed a good proof reading -- the book taught me what I needed to learn about grep as it's manual page lacks examples and a certain amount of clarity. (Currently, grep's manual page is written like a specification rather then something focused towards a user, omitting example usage.)

(There is a small chapter on Perl REGEX. ie. --perl-regexp)

If you need a book to learn REGEX and have a little trouble with the GREP Manual Page, or don't want to read a huge book like Mastering REGEX, get this book for learning REGEX (aka BRE/ERE).

Also noteworthy, the MOBI formated EBook version of this "grep Pocket Reference" is the first readable MOBI EBook I've been able to read so far on my Kindle DXG. This book had few TABLE TAGS (or computer technical drawings/coding). And of the presented console/terminal text presented, it was readable unlike many other MOBI technical books I've tried to read.

Edited 2011.11.19: Also, GREP originates from the line editor called 'ed' (ie. command syntax: g/re/p) according to the author Robbins of the book sed & awk (2nd Edition). The third chapter of the sed & awk (2nd Edition) is devoted to regular expressions (grep), as sed & awk depend on this feature for searching.