Subject: egrep and fgrep?
From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2021 09:22:45 +0200
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi!  A long standing pet issue of mine are the "deprecated" (since
2005?) tools fgrep and egrep.  If there is any meaning to the term
"deprecated", maybe they should be dropped at some point, or the
deprecation-status escalated (stderr warning? syslog output?).  What do
you think?

Maybe now is an acceptable time to drop them, I recall seeing some more
recent distributions that do not provide them, and things appears to
work for them except for the rare bug here and there.

Alternatively, how about un-deprecating them, for compatibility with BSD
and deployed popular usage.  I must admint I use egrep quite often.  I
think un-deprecating tools/APIs is an acceptable thing to do in some
cases.

Maybe a middle-ground could exist, that they won't be installed (or
work?) in some "POSIX"-mode -- I think the main reason for deprecating
them was that POSIX dropped a requirement for them?  That doesn't
necessarily mean things must be deprecated.

/Simon