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VERSION
    This document describes version 0.014 of Acme::CPANModules::GrepVariants
    (from Perl distribution Acme-CPANModules-GrepVariants), released on
    2025-08-20.

DESCRIPTION
    This list catalogs various grep-like tools.

    1. Reimplementations

    grep (from PerlPowerTools) simply tries to reimplement grep in Perl, as
    part of the project to reimplement many Unix utilities in Perl. It has
    few practical uses; mainly educational. The portability advantage of
    Perl is probably minor as grep and many Unix utilities are now available
    on other platforms including Windows.

    2a. Improvements in recursive searching against files

    ack. Created in 2005 by Andy Lester, ack is the granddaddy of grep-like
    programs that try to improve the experience of using grep to search for
    text in source code. ack skips VCS directories like ".git" or ".svn",
    and understands file types so it doesn't look into giant ".mp4"s and
    other binaries by default. ack has spurred the development of its
    improvements (mostly in speed aspect) like The Silver Searcher ("ag")
    (implemented in C) or "ripgrep" (implemented in Rust). "git" also now
    includes a "git-grep" utility (implemented in C). ack has a website:
    <https://beyondgrep.com>. See also <https://betterthanack.com>.

    gre (from App::Gre) is a "grep clone using Perl regexp's with better
    file filtering, defaults, speed, and presentation". It seems to focus on
    providing many options to filter files (from including/excluding by file
    extension, by matching against filename, by first line, by maximum
    directory depth, and so on). It also offers some alternative output
    styles.

    2b. Improvements in searching for multiple patterns in no particular
    order

    Normally with the regular grep, to search for all 'foo' and 'bar' *in no
    particular order*, you either have to do something like:

     % grep --color=always foo FILES | grep bar

    or:

     % grep -P 'foo.*bar|bar.*foo' FILES

    both of which get unwieldy if the number of patterns get higher. Or you
    can use look-ahead:

     % grep -P '(?=.*foo)(?=.*bar)' FILES

    but this does not capture (thus highlight) the patterns. To do that, you
    can pipe to grep once more:

     % grep -P '(?=.*foo)(?=.*bar)' FILES | grep -P '(foo|bar)'

    but you introduce the complications of double filtering (e.g. filenames
    in FILES is now the subject of the second grep).

    Note that searching for multiple patterns in particular order
    ('foo.*bar'), or searching for aternates from multiple patterns
    ('foo|bar') is no problem in grep.

    Some tools have been written to make it easier to specify multiple
    patterns:

    abgrep (from App::abgrep) sports a "--all" option to require all
    patterns to appear in a line (in no particular order). Normally, when
    multiple patterns are given (via multiple "-e" or "--regexp" options),
    grep will include lines that just contain at least one of the patterns.

    greple (from App::Greple). By default, greple only display lines that
    contain all patterns, instead of just one. greple also has a few other
    tricks up its sleeve, like configuration file to define complex regexes,
    matching across lines, and Japanese text support.

    grep-terms (from App::GrepUtils) is a grep wrapper to convert multiple
    terms into a chain of look-ahead patterns like described above. This
    allows you to use the standard grep.

    3. Variants: alternate ways of specifying things to search for

    Instead of specifying a regexp pattern directly, with rpgrep (from
    App::rpgrep) you can specify a pattern name in a Regexp::Pattern::*
    module instead.

    With wcgrep (from App::wcgrep) you can search using wildcard pattern
    instead of regex, which is admittedly more limited than regex.

    grep-similar-to (from App::grep::similar::text lets you specify a text
    and it will only show lines from input that are similar to the provided
    text.

    grep-sounds-like (from App::grep::sounds::like lets you specify a word
    and it will only show lines from input that have words that sound like
    the provided word. You can choose from one of several phonetic
    algorithms like Metaphone (the default), Soundex, etc.

    4a. Variants: alternate source: repository (version control system)
    content and history

    For git, the abovementioned "git-grep" can search for files in the work
    tree as well as commit content. For Mercurial, "hg grep" accomplishes
    the same. Alternatively you can dump the history then use the standard
    "grep" to go through it.

    4b. Variants: alternate source: Perl source code

    pmgrep (from App::pmgrep) lets you grep over locally installed Perl
    modules. It's basically a shortcut for something like this:

     % pmlist -Rx | xargs grep PAT
     % grep PAT $(pmlist -Rx)

    cpangrep (from App::cpangrep) is a CLI for web service
    <https://cpan.grep.me>, which is no longer operating. To grep from files
    on CPAN, use <https://metacpan.org>.

    grepl (from App::Grepl) uses PPI to let you grep over Perl *documents*;
    it allows you to do things like: search only in Perl code comments or
    inside string literals.

    podgrep (from pmtools) greps from POD sections of Perl source.

    4c. Variants: alternate source: CSV

    csvgrep (from csvgrep)

    csv-grep (from App::CSVUtils) allows you to apply Perl code against rows
    of CSV.

    4d. Variants: alternate source: word lists

    wordlist (from App::wordlist) greps words from wordlist modules (modules
    that contains word lists, see WordList).

    4e. Variants: other alternate sources

    grep-bash-history-entries (from App::BashHistoryUtils), with grephist as
    shorter alias.

    grep-from-iod (from App::IODUtils).

    grep-from-ini (from App::INIUtils).

    grep-from-coin (from App::CryptoCurrencyUtils).

    grep-from-exchange (from App::CryptoCurrencyUtils).

    jgrep (from App::JsonLogUtils).

    pdfgrep (alias: grep-from-pdf) (from App::PDFUtils) searches against
    text in PDF files (it's a wrapper for "pdftotext" utility and grep).

    ptargrep (from Archive::Tar) searches against table of contents of tar
    files.

    5a. Variants: searching URLs

    grep-url (from App::grep::url) greps URLs from lines of input. You don't
    have to manually specify regex that matches URLs yourself; you can just
    add additional criteria for the URLs, e.g. whether the host part must
    contain some text, or whether a certain query parameter must match some
    pattern.

    5b. Variants: searching dates

    grep-date (from App::grep::date) greps for dates in lines of text.

    dategrep (from App::dategrep) prints lines matching a date range.

ACME::CPANMODULES ENTRIES
    PerlPowerTools
        Author: BRIANDFOY <https://metacpan.org/author/BRIANDFOY>

    ack
    App::Gre
        Author: JACOBG <https://metacpan.org/author/JACOBG>

    App::abgrep
        Author: PERLANCAR <https://metacpan.org/author/PERLANCAR>

    App::Greple