From: bpmurray*STUFFER*@socrates.cgl.ucsf.EDU (Bernard P. Murray, PhD) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Weekly Mini-FAQ post for DJGPP Date: Wed, 03 Mar 1999 20:46:14 -0700 Organization: University of California, San Francisco Lines: 91 Message-ID: References: <3 DOT 0 DOT 6 DOT 32 DOT 19990303125609 DOT 0093d100 AT pop DOT globalserve DOT net> NNTP-Posting-Host: macmac-2.ucsf.edu To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com In article <3 DOT 0 DOT 6 DOT 32 DOT 19990303125609 DOT 0093d100 AT pop DOT globalserve DOT net>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com wrote: > What, exactly, are these: > > diff-2.7.1 gawk-3.0.3 groff-1.10 idutils-3.2 ispell-3.1.20 less-332 > m4-1.4 perl-5.005_02 sh-utils-1.12 textutils-1.22 I assume that this is a serious question. I'll comment on the ones I know and use - please pardon the simple nature of the descriptions. diff = diff utilities A rough equivalent to DOS's FC although much more sophisticated. FC tends to give up when it has exceeded a certain number of differences whereas diff will give you a complete report on the differences between two files. You can also use diff output to patch files. gawk = GNU AWK A powerful scripting language targeted mainly at linewise text file manipulation on the fly. AWK can grab and manipulate individual columns and has a full search and replace ability. The scripts can be quite short and are fairly intelligible. Quite quick to learn the basics. I use it when a C program would be complete overkill. I started with non-DJGPP DOS GAWK some time ago but this tends to lag behind "the real thing". There is a wide variety of AWK variants, many of which have been ported to DOS. You can find the AWK FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-lang/awk/faq/ ispell = spell checker for text files Fast and flexible. less = GNU's version of the MORE pager A rough equivalent of a combination of DOS MORE and one of those README.COM utilities software packages often include for viewing text files. Unlike MORE you can skip backwards as well as forwards and can search within the file. Very flexible in configuration. perl = PERL ...now come on, you must have heard of PERL...! This is a very powerful scripting language which is currently predominantly associated with web page CGI scripts (as is Python) but is actually quite general purpose. Ported to just about everything. http://www.perl.org sh-utils = shell utilities Mainly programs that are required for shell script compatibility. Some of them don't have the same functionality in DOS as the OS lacks the facilities to handle multitasking, groups and user id's etc. I am glad that it includes tee as this makes DOS shell scripts much easier. text-utils = text utilities (doh!) Probably *the* reason I rejoice at having installed DJGPP. This has all the text manipulation utilities I just cannot live without. The ones that mean I don't have to write something in C or load each file into a word processor to play with. Some have less powerful DOS equivalents (eg. cat = TYPE and/or COPY, sort = SORT) but some like head/tail, cut/paste, fold, join, split, uniq, wc etc. only appear to otherwise exist in the world of UNIX. These are the things that make a command line interface so powerful. A few minutes spent learning these and your mouse will gather dust. Don't forget to include sed. I'm happy to be corrected on anything I described incorrectly (I'm primarily a biochemist not a programmer - but you can use the text utilities to analyse whole genomes!). I will leave m4, groff and the ID utilities to someone who is more familiar with them. Bernard ...and thanks once again DJ Delorie and GNU... -- Bernard P. Murray, PhD Dept. Cell. Mol. Pharmacol., UCSF, San Francisco, USA