A real Linux user can build their own xargs, sed and grep in an arbitrary environment, be it node, windows scripting host or the python interpreter in some washing machines firmware

… and the subtle errors in my simple example were, of course, left as an exercise for the student so you’d learn how to fix them.

I once used cygwin to accidentally create files with binary data as their file name that couldn't be deleted in the windows file explorer. I wrote another cygwin program that deleted these files.

The only difference between me and the author of this blog post is that I didn't upload my program to the internet where people could ridicule it for its simplicity.

Was this supposed to be a command line tool used in a Linux environment, where grep, sed, etc. are already available? Doesn't excuse their behavior, not at all, but I can see exactly how that might provoke their derision. The mistake was quite worse than I thought. But it is foolish to be provoked by the foolishness or ignorance of others. They could have remained silent, or could have reached out constructively (e.g. by introducing them to those widely distributed set of really powerful command line tools).

Or is there some JavaScript additional functionality that I'm missing?

Even if sed and grep are available their weird syntax is enough to make people write modern replacements.

I don't care if they're not 100% feature complete, the fact I can remember how to use them for my simple everday tasks (searching, finding/replacing across many files) without needing to consult a manpage or search online for answers is enough.

I used grep daily for years and _still_ it didn't feel like it made sense. I remember reading about Ack (https://beyondgrep.com/) some time in 2009-2010 , installing it and switching over entirely within about five minutes.

Modern sed:

https://github.com/chmln/sd

Modern grep:

https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher

https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Node is not a Linux-only platform. It's easy to imagine reasons you might need this tool in your software project, that works on all the platforms your project does.