Subject: bug#19998: GREP_OPTIONS alternative?

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:33:15 -0700

Christian Kujau wrote:
> Without GREP_OPTIONS, one has to
>
> 1) Write a script for each grep variant (fgrep, zgrep, egrep, etc.)
> 2) put $HOME/bin in $PATH

No, you don't need to write a script for each grep variant.  You need to write a 
script only for 'grep'.  That's because fgrep etc. invoke grep.

> Even GNU/tar has TAR_OPTIONS

Yes, and on my list of things to do is to remove TAR_OPTIONS as well, for the 
same reasons that GREP_OPTIONS should be removed.  (You have been warned. :-) 
It's too error-prone to have fundamental utilities' behavior depend on settings 
of random environment variables.