python vs. grep

[Anton Slesarev]

I've read great paper about generators:
http://www.dabeaz.com/generators/index.html

Author say that it's easy to write analog of common linux tools such
as awk,grep etc. He say that performance could be even better.

But I have some problem with writing performance grep analog.


It's my script:

import re
pat = re.compile("sometext")

f = open("bigfile",'r')

flines = (line for line in f if pat.search(line))
c=0
for x in flines:
    c+=1
print c

and bash:
grep "sometext" bigfile | wc -l

Python code 3-4 times slower on windows. And as I remember on linux
the same situation...

Buffering in open even increase time.

Is it possible to increase file reading performance?