What is Grep-Wc?

Desk Accessory

Set a pattern to match (simple regex grep) inside text files, and/or perform a word count

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Hiding under the cryptic name of Grep-Wc is a handy DA that reads and counts words in text and MacWrite files, You can use it to read on-disk documents from any application that supports DAs. It can open a second window in MacWrite, too. Although Grep-We won't let you edit the document, it will save it as a text file, which you can then open with a text-file DA and copy via the Clipboard into MacWrite. That may not be elegant, but it's adequate if your cut-and-paste needs are modest, or if you only need to read another document. The word-count feature is also a handy supplement to MacWrite. 

The acronym Grep (Globally search for Regular Expressions and Print) means the ability to show on the screen every line in a document containing a string of characters—even to look for those characters at only certain places in each line. However, for most people the real value of Grep-Wc is its ability to read MacWrite and text files from within applications. 

Grep-Wc is limited to reading only those files, ignoring MacWrite formatting information and pictures. It uses no scroll bars but starts at the beginning and runs the document sequentially through its screen window. (Be sure you get version 1.1, since version 1.0 bombs on MacWrite 2.2 documents.) You might ask more from a commercial product, but Grep-Wc is extremely useful, reasonably small at 12K—and free.

Hecht, Jeff. (September 1987). Shareware DA Text Utilities. Macworld. (pgs. 163-164).

Download Grep-Wc for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

• Macintosh 128K or later

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac