RedHat 7.0 sed speed is slow

[Edgar Allen]

Forwarded message:
>
>I'm such a newbie that I don't even know how to update to the latest version
>of sed - and don't 
>know if it would help?
>
>What am I missing?
>
Recent versionds of GNU sed have been slower because they have added 
new functionality in preference to performance.

What do you want to do ?  Sometimes 'flex' is many times faster than 'sed'.

Sometimes the way the RE is written can be faster on one version and
not the other.