how long does it take

From: Arianne Lefebvre (al_at_ne-me-spammez-pas.example.com)
Date: 07/29/03 

Date: 29 Jul 2003 17:25:07 GMT

A question of curiosity:

M Vogel and other whizzes, how long does it take you to write what looks
like a complex sed script i.e. this one recently submitted here:

sed '/[^ ]/{s/ *\(.\).*/\1/;H;d;};s/.*//;x;s/\n/ /g;s/ //' input > output

I only use sed and other tools like it once every couple of months, and I
always have to go back and look things up to remind myself of syntax and
special character quoting etc. I am just curious, when you're working with
these tools everyday and you're smart and you have a good memory, can you
think of how to do this and write it in like 20 secs, or do you have to
scratch your head for a minute and make a quick trial version, or is
it still more than 5 mins labour for you?

Arianne