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As the title suggests, which one is better to match numbers, [[:digit:]] or [0-9]?

I'm using the bash shell

Thanks :)

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  • What do you mean by "better" ? if both achieve the same goal, both are good enough solution unless you have extra requirements you haven't mentioned.
    – Stephane
    Jun 28, 2010 at 15:07
  • hmm I'm thinking about performance, readability and portability, even though the first has been already answered :)
    – Likso
    Jun 28, 2010 at 15:58

2 Answers 2

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The only reason that [[:digit:]] must be used is to support locales that use digits other than 0-9. For example Arabic-Indic Numerals: ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ (Unicode U+0660 through U+0669). Otherwise for the Hindu-Arabic numerals 0123456789, [0-9] works equally as well as [[:digit:]].

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# time grep -oE '[[:digit:]]' /etc/services
...
real    0m0.029s
user    0m0.017s
sys     0m0.013s


# time grep -oE '[0-9]' /etc/services
...
real    0m0.029s
user    0m0.016s
sys     0m0.012s

I could probably write a quick script to average them, and I bet I'd find that the averages are identical, but it certainly gives you the idea.

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  • 2
    gist.github.com/456559
    – Andrew
    Jun 28, 2010 at 23:46
  • +1, I was so focused on summing/averaging that it didn't occur to me to just time the whole big glob. Well-played.
    – BMDan
    Jun 30, 2010 at 13:27

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