On Tue, 24 Apr 2012, Jim Meyering wrote: > Aníbal Monsalve Salazar wrote: > > Debian bug report is posted at: > > > > http://bugs.debian.org/582083 > ... > >>There's no reason not to obey the user when they ask for "--color", > >>regardless of whether the output is to a tty or not. They wouldn't > >>have asked for --color if they didn't want it, and most other gnu > >>programs assume --color=yes rather than --color=auto when supplied with > >>just --color. Man and info pages and translations appear to need to > >>work since they don't imply what the default is. Nice easy patch to > >>apply! > >> > >>[1] New version looks like: > >>diff -ru grep-2.10//src/main.c /tmp/grep-2.10//src/main.c > >>--- grep-2.10//src/main.c 2012-04-24 13:11:57.000000000 +1000 > >>+++ /tmp/grep-2.10//src/main.c 2012-04-24 12:56:47.000000000 +1000 > >>@@ -2059,7 +2059,7 @@ > >> else > >> show_help = 1; > >> } else > >>- color_option = 2; > >>+ color_option = 1; > >> if (color_option == 2) > >> { > >> char const *t; > > Thanks for the report of the documentation bug and the patch, but the patch > (changing the meaning of --color from --color=auto to --color=always) > would break existing usage. > > Currently, people can use --color in an always-on alias/function > or set the GREP_OPTIONS=--color envvar and get colorized output, > yet not have those ANSI terminal highlighting bytes interfere > with output that is not to a tty. > > If we were to make your proposed change, they'd find those > color codes in unexpected (and undesirable) places.
Easy to fix! Fix the bug in their login scripts! > However, this is definitely a documentation bug, and I'd > appreciate a patch for both --help and grep.texi. > > Jim > > PS. True, it is undesirable to have grep's --color(with no value) > default to "auto", when in ls it defaults to "always", but changing > grep's default now would be too disruptive. We'd have to warn that > the default is going to change for a year or two before making the > actual change, and even then, some users would be impacted. It doesn't take much to change one's .rc files to say GREP_OPTIONS="--color=auto" rather than "--color"! They should have been doing that all along (because they were relying on undocumented behaviour :). I personally have "GREP_OPTIONS=--color=auto". If the output is a tty, that works as expected. If the output is a pipe, no color as expected; all good. If the output is "less -R", I want --color, so I say "echo test | grep --color es", and I don't get color. That's not what I asked for! -- Tim Connors -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
