Shell Filter Test Utility?

[Tim Burgess <tburgess@whitley.unimelb.edu.au>]

Gday All,

Am trying to write a shell backend and it seems to me that the hardest
obstacle to overcome is the search function.  What would be *really* nice
is a utility that will:

a) accept an ldif file (from stdin, say)
b) test it for a match to the rfc xxxx (i can't remember :] ) filter spec
passed on the commans line.
c) either output something or return status depending on the result

Does anyone know of such a utility or something similar?

Cheers,

Tim Burgess :)