On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 03:19:21PM -0400, Ted Unangst wrote: > 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.
hmm. you don;t want to encourage people to use it, but want to avoid breakage. is that right? (so in the future we can prepare for "grep supports this, but doesn;t document it" PRs ;) jmc
