Re: [bug-idutils] id utils integration with grep

[Claudio Fontana]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Jim Meyering<address@hidden> wrote:
> Edward Peschko wrote:
>> When going through the id utils 'past and future'
>> section, I noticed the following items:
>>
>> Future releases of idutils might include:
>>
>>    - an optional coupling with GNU grep, so that grep
>>      can use an ID database for hints
>>
>>    - a cscope work-alike query interface
>>
>>    - incremental update of the ID database.
>>
>> Now, I love grep's interface, but on large datasets it is
>> agonizingly slow, since it redoes all the work of
>> matching every single time the underlying files are read.
>>
>> Has there been any work/talk with the grep team
>> towards providing the optional coupling talked about
>> in #1, or have these efforts/ideas been abandoned?
>
> As far as I know, no one is working on this.

I do not think it is desirable either.
If the ID lookup turns up negative, what should the behavior of grep be?
Either it assumes that the database is up-to-date and includes the interesting
files (which can lead to erroneous answers if it is not), or it
searches the files
anyway, which would make the point moot.