Ken's grep for Plan 9 beats them all. % time /usr/local/plan9/bin/grep -c . /tmp/x 39536274 real 0m1.731s user 0m1.568s sys 0m0.158s % time /usr/bin/egrep -c . /tmp/x 39536274 real 0m9.798s user 0m9.644s sys 0m0.153s % % time /usr/local/plan9/bin/grep -c '(ab|cd)' /tmp/x 1023171 real 0m1.719s user 0m1.560s sys 0m0.158s % time /usr/bin/egrep -c '(ab|cd)' /tmp/x 1023171 real 0m32.692s user 0m32.525s sys 0m0.166s-rob