>>>   Ever heard of the magical word "grep"? Do you know what it's used for in
>>> unix systems? If yes, and you understand why this utility has existed for,
>>> like, forever, then why are you asking "why would you evern want to do such
>>> a thing"?
> 
>> I throught that grep is an overly-complicated way of searching for the 
>> location of a string within one particular file? (I usually just use my 
>> text editor's "search" function.)
> 
>   You use your text editor to tell you which files in a directory structure
> contain a specified string? Talk about being overly complicated. grep is a
> way, way simpler way to do that.

No, I mean... I thought grep can only search within a single file (as 
can any decent text editor). I didn't realise it can search multiple files.

(I'm still having trouble thinking up a use-case for that. About the 
only thing I can think of is trying to find out which header file 
defines a particular symbol or something.)

>> I guess I don't very often edit large files...
> 
>   What does file size have to do with anything?

If it's a small file, you can search it just be scrolling through it and 
looking with your eyes. You don't need an automated search facility. The 
only real reason to use an automated search is if there's too much data 
to hunt through manually.

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