Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

grep VS Mawk

Compare grep VS Mawk and see what are their differences

grep logo grep

grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines matching a regular...

Mawk logo Mawk

mawk is an interpreter for the AWK Programming Language.
  • grep Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • Mawk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-07

grep features and specs

  • Powerful Text Search
    Grep can search through large amounts of text using regular expressions, making it a very powerful tool for locating specific patterns or strings within files.
  • Performance
    Grep is highly optimized for quickly searching through text files, often outperforming other general-purpose text-search tools in speed.
  • Flexibility
    The tool can handle complex searches with a variety of options such as recursive search, inclusion/exclusion of certain files, and case sensitivity.
  • Cross-Platform
    Available on multiple operating systems including Unix, Linux, and Windows (via third-party tools like Cygwin), making it a versatile choice for different environments.
  • Integration with Other Tools
    Seamlessly integrates with other Unix command-line utilities and can be used in pipelines to process text in multiple stages.

Possible disadvantages of grep

  • Steep Learning Curve
    May be difficult for beginners to master due to the need to understand regular expressions and various command-line options.
  • Limited Modern Language Support
    Primarily designed for text and may not work well with binary files or more complex modern data formats like JSON or XML without additional tools or processing.
  • Basic User Interface
    Primarily a command-line tool with no graphical user interface, which might be less user-friendly for those accustomed to GUI-based tools.
  • No Syntax Highlighting
    Lacks built-in syntax highlighting, which can make it harder to visually parse complex regular expressions and search results.
  • Filesystem Dependent
    Performance can degrade significantly depending on the filesystem and hardware, especially when searching through very large directories on slow disks.

Mawk features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Analysis of grep

Overall verdict

  • Yes, GNU grep is a good utility for text searching and data extraction tasks, especially in command-line environments.

Why this product is good

  • GNU grep is considered good for its efficiency and powerful pattern-matching capabilities. It is widely used in the Unix/Linux environment for text searching and processing because of its speed and ability to handle regular expressions. The tool is effective for searching large volumes of data in a flexible and reliable manner, thanks to its numerous options and versatility.

Recommended for

  • Software developers needing to search through code bases
  • System administrators managing log files
  • Data analysts processing text data
  • IT professionals who regularly work in Unix/Linux environments
  • Anyone who needs a powerful and fast tool for pattern matching in text files

grep videos

GREP COMMAND : IN-DEPTH GUIDE [ PART 1 ]

More videos:

  • Review - Linux Terminal Basics: Grep

Mawk videos

No Mawk videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to grep and Mawk)
File Manager
82 82%
18% 18
Clipboard Manager
76 76%
24% 24
Note Taking
79 79%
21% 21
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Mawk seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

grep mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of grep yet. Tracking of grep recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Mawk mentions (1)

  • Frawk: A fast, JITted, statically-typed AWK written in Rust
    - mawk (https://invisible-island.net/mawk/) - bundled in some Linux distros (?), known as the fastest byte-code compiled implementation. All three have very good compatibility, but Gawk is super-set over POSIX standard. I have some evidence here, since I regularly test [1] against these implementations and even some others, like GoAWK. [1] https://github.com/xonixx/makesure/actions/runs/1830978431. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing grep and Mawk, you can also consider the following products

grepWin - grepWin is a simple search and replace tool which can use PCRE regular expressions to search for...

Gawk - The awk utility interprets a special-purpose programming language that makes it possible to handle...

dnGREP - dnGrep allows you to search across files with easy-to-read results.

JREPL.BAT - Performs a global regular expression search and replace operation on each line of ASCII input from...

PowerGREP - Quickly search through large numbers of files on your PC or network using powerful text patterns to find exactly the information you want. Search and replace with plain text or regular expressions to maintain web sites, source code, reports, ...

datamash - GNU datamash is command-line program which performs simple calculation (e.g.