TUI-apps VS learn_gnugrep_ripgrep

Hello!

I am pleased to announce a new version of my "CLI text processing with GNU sed" ebook. This book heavily leans on examples to present features one by one. In addition to sed commands and options, regular expressions are also discussed in detail.

Links:

* PDF/EPUB versions: https://learnbyexample.gumroad.com/l/gnu_sed (free for a few days)

* Web version: https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_gnused/ (always free)

* Markdown source, example files, etc: https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnused

* Interactive TUI app for exercises: https://github.com/learnbyexample/TUI-apps/blob/main/SedExercises

I would highly appreciate it if you'd let me know how you felt about this book. It could be anything from a simple thank you, pointing out a typo, mistakes in code snippets, which aspects of the book worked for you (or didn't!) and so on. Reader feedback is essential and especially so for self-published authors.

Happy learning :)

I also wrote an interactive TUI app based on some of the exercises from the ebook. Reference solutions are provided for both GNU grep and ripgrep.

These days I prefer coding TUI apps using Textual (see my repo https://github.com/learnbyexample/TUI-apps for examples) since I find this framework easier to work with and I don't need full GUI features for my projects.

This year I started updating my existing books and I'm also creating interactive apps. Here's one for Python regex: https://github.com/learnbyexample/TUI-apps/blob/main/PyRegexExercises. Next is grep.

Having an interactive program that automatically loads questions and checks the solution is wonderful to have while learning a topic. I wrote a TUI app that has beginner to advanced level exercises for Python regular expressions. There are more than 100 exercises covering both the builtin re and third-party regex modules.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnugrep_ripgrep for markdown source, example files, exercise solutions, sample chapters and other details related to the book.

I use my ebooks for reference:

* GNU grep and ripgrep (https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_gnugrep_ripgrep/)

* GNU sed (https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_gnused/)

* GNU awk (https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_gnuawk/)

* Ruby one-liners cookbook (https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_ruby_oneliners/)

* Perl one-liners cookbook (https://learnbyexample.github.io/learn_perl_oneliners/)

* Command line text processing with GNU Coreutils (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli_text_processing_coreuti...)

* Command line text processing with Rust tools (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli_text_processing_rust/) — work-in-progress

* Computing from the Command Line (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli-computing/) — work-in-progress

>The -I flag only considers text files. This radically speeds up recursive greps.

I use ripgrep when I need better speed. I've pretty much switched to ripgrep these days, but still use GNU grep when I'm answering questions on stackoverflow, reddit, etc.

>ABC flags

Good to also know about `--group-separator` and `--no-group-separator` when there are multiple non-contiguous matches. Helps to customize the separator or remove them altogether. Sadly, these options are still not explained in `man grep` on Ubunutu. You'll have to use `info grep` or the online manual to find them.

Options I use often that is not mentioned in the article:

* `-c` to count the number of matches

* `-F` for fixed string matching

* `-x` to match whole lines

* `-P` for PCRE (as mentioned in many comments here)

* `--color=auto` this is part of command name alias, so it is always used

I wrote a book as well on "GNU grep and ripgrep": https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnugrep_ripgrep Free to read online.

GNU grep and ripgrep