Dude! You need help with using your tools' features to reduce your pipeline lengths.
- grep derp | sed whatever is the same as sed '/derp/ whatever' (you might be interested in sed -r for that matter)
- sed whatever | sed whatever\ else is the same as sed -e whatever;whatever\ else
This list is by no means complete but saves a lot of external processes already, and seriously: think about writing the whole thing in pure bash or awk. There might be just too little gain to justify including all these tools without composing the many features they provide.
- grep derp | sed whatever is the same as sed '/derp/ whatever' (you might be interested in sed -r for that matter)
- sed whatever | sed whatever\ else is the same as sed -e whatever;whatever\ else
This list is by no means complete but saves a lot of external processes already, and seriously: think about writing the whole thing in pure bash or awk. There might be just too little gain to justify including all these tools without composing the many features they provide.