On Sun, Jul 17, 2011, Jason McIntyre wrote: > On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 11:43:03AM -0400, Ted Unangst wrote: >> I recently learned that our grep does not support the \<\> syntax for >> word boundaries, only the somewhat more difficult to use [[:<:]] format. >> It's fairly easy to convert one to the other however. >> > > if you do this, we will need to think carefully about how to document > it. grep(1) itself does not discuss REs, and instead points to > re_format(7). but you are proposing an extension to grep only. > > can i ask why you want to support this? it is a gnu grep thing or > something?
It is supported (and documented) by GNU grep. I'm not proposing documenting it per se, it's simply something that will work if you use it, but the documented regex format remains the supported way. There is at least one port (libpqxx) that expects this syntax to work and doesn't check that it doesn't. It just runs the command. I suspect other such scripts exist.
