Range Grep 🔍

This is a command-line utility that lets you search within an ASCII-encoded text file for numbers that are within a given range.

Why should you use this instead of grep?

Range Grep has a simpler interface. If you use grep you're going to have to specify the range you want to search for by providing a regular expression. With Range Grep you just have to specify the two numbers to search between and a file name, that's it.

How does this compare to grep in terms of performance?

I tested grep and Range Grep on file sizes from 300 MB to 2.7 GB and Range Grep is ~2.5 seconds slower than grep in the worst case. (Note: If you use the --color argument then Range Grep becomes much much slower. These numbers are for output without that flag.)

How To Use

Usage: ./range <lowest number> <highest number> <file>

Command Line Arguments:

--color Print out the matches in RED on the terminal. Defaults to no color.

How To Build

Install the GCC C++ compiler and run the build.sh script. There should be no output at all if the compilation is successful.

There's no build system or Make file. I intentionally limited myself to only the C and C++ standard library and a simple build script since this is such a small project.

How To Run Tests

./test.sh

Expected output:

$ ./test.sh 
Compiling range.cpp
Compiling test_range.cpp
Linking
Running

If you get the output above, that means that all the tests passed.