Thank you for that interesting test case. I think there is something else at play here, maybe some shell quirk.
Consider the following simplified test case. $ cat /tmp/LP1165536.txt 123 ABC abc !%$ $ grep [\w] /tmp/LP1165536.txt || echo "nothing found" # should match all three characters in lines 1-3 nothing found $ grep [^\w] /tmp/LP1165536.txt # matches all three characters on all four lines 123 ABC abc !%$ -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to grep in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1165536 Title: grep doesn't handle \w correctly Status in grep package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Put the following text into a file called testfile.txt: -------testfile.txt------- if ($this->_touchOnly) //log if touchOnly only log the output of the controller if $silent if (window.console) console.log(data); ERunActions::runAction($logOutput=false,$silent=false) self::logTrace('Action output: ' . $output,$controller->id,$actionId); self::logError($msg,$controller->id,$actionId); -------end of testfile.txt Try this command: $ grep -Re "[^\w]log[^\w]" testfile.txt Expected result: Should find matches only in lines 1,2,3, gighlighting the word "log" Observed result: Finds also matches in lines 5,6,7, highlighting the strings "logO", "logT" and "logE" respectively. According to the man page: The symbol \w is a synonym for [_[:alnum:]] And in turn: For example, [[:alnum:]] means the character class of numbers and letters in the current locale. In the C locale and ASCII character set encoding, this is the same as [0-9A-Za-z]. It looks like, instead, \w is interpreted as only numbers and LOWERCASE letters, but not uppercase letters. I know it seems unbelievable to be finding a bug in grep in 2013, but compare to http://regexr.com?34e4i which shows the expected result ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10 Package: grep 2.12-2 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-27.46-generic 3.5.7.7 Uname: Linux 3.5.0-27-generic i686 NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu10 Architecture: i386 Date: Sat Apr 6 22:27:39 2013 InstallationDate: Installed on 2010-06-23 (1018 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429) MarkForUpload: True ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: grep UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2013-01-13 (83 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grep/+bug/1165536/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
