In the case of our example, checking the values of keywords is a simple task given the short length of the file. In the case of large files, finding keywords can become a painful task. Fortunately, an RCS command is able to retrieve the keywords from a file and display them:

$ ident our_file.txt
our_file.txt:
     $Id: our_file.txt,v 1.3 2003-05-27 03:11:54-04 ashawley Exp $

A comparable result to this command is accomplished with the grep command:

$ grep -e '\$Id: rcs.xml,v 1.8 2005/04/05 19:06:10 ashawley Exp $' our_file.txt
$Id: our_file.txt,v 1.3 2003-05-27 03:11:54-04 ashawley Exp $

Using ident is more predictable than using grep. The grep command will display any other text that is on the same line as an RCS variable. Besides being easier to run than grep, ident innately knows which RCS variables while grep requires they all be specified