27.18 Fast Searches and Spelling Checks with "look"

Every so often, someone has designed a new, faster grep -type program. Public domain software archives have more than a few of them. One of the fastest search programs has been around for years: look . It uses a binary search method that's very fast. But look won't solve all your problems: it works only on files that have been sorted ( 36.1 ) . If you have a big file or database that can be sorted, searching it with look will save a lot of time. For example, to search for all lines that start with Alpha :

% 

look Alpha

 

filename


Alpha particle
Alphanumeric

look	The look program can also be used to check the spelling of a word or find a related word; see article 29.3 . If you don't have look installed on your system, you can get it from the CD-ROM.