On 08/21/2013 10:54 PM, Linda Walsh wrote: > Ok, thank you for "sharing", but doesn't '-E' mean egrep pattern syntax? > That even, '-E' fails, telling the user that they can only > use the syntax they are specifying seems "abusive". That > other options in grep DO take the 'last' option, but the > syntax options are disallowed, is inconsistent, unuseful and > creates breakages in existing scripts that don't know they > should clear GREP_OPTIONS in order for egrep and fgrep to > function correctly.
Anyone that sets -E via GREP_OPTIONS is already breaking their own system, and we have no sympathy for their dumb action. An explicit error is better than silently making a multitude of scripts misbehave. In my opinion, GREP_OPTIONS is a mistake - it's ONLY useful and safe purpose is to do automatic coloring when used from a terminal, but that can be done with an alias or shell function, and could have been done with an explicitly-named GREP_COLOR instead of GREP_OPTIONS - if only we could go back 20+ years and design it that way to begin with. > Could 15127 also be re-opened as it was closed unilaterally in the > presence of obvious bugs. Thanks... These are not obvious bugs. As POSIX permits both behaviors (mutually exclusive options giving an error, vs. last option wins), it is merely a quality of implementation question, which crosses the line into subjective rather than objective. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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