GNU bug report logs - #48948
grep documentation feedback

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: David Apps <sppa.divad <at> virgin.net>
To: bug-grep <at> gnu.org
Subject: grep documentation feedback
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2021 20:42:03 +0100

I hope that you are well.

Thank you for your work on this great software.

I have some feedback about the document at the following address:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html

When quoting from this document, I have removed the non-ASCII 
characters. The characters that I have removed were left and right 
single quotation marks.

1. In the section "3.3 The Backslash Character and Special Expressions":

\<
Match the empty string at the beginning of word.
\>
Match the empty string at the end of word.

Perhaps changing "of word" to "of a word" would be more consistent with 
the language elsewhere in the document.

2. In the section "3.6 Basic vs Extended Regular Expressions":

In basic regular expressions the meta-characters ?, +, {, |, (, and ) 
lose their special meaning; instead use the backslashed versions \?, \+, 
\{, \|, \(, and \).

Should } and \} appear in these lists?

3. In the section "4 Usage":

$ grep -n -- 'f.*\.c$' *g*.h /dev/null

The other examples do not begin with $. Perhaps remove $ for greater 
consistency.

4. In the section "4 Usage", perhaps the answer to question 3 would be 
better if the examples used -* in place of * to search for files that 
begin with -.

Thank you.

David

Message #10 received at 48948-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: David Apps <sppa.divad <at> virgin.net>
Cc: 48948-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#48948: grep documentation feedback
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2021 16:10:35 -0700

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 6/10/21 12:42 PM, David Apps via Bug reports for GNU grep wrote:

> Perhaps changing "of word" to "of a word"

Good idea, thanks.

> In basic regular expressions the meta-characters ?, +, {, |, (, and ) 
> lose their special meaning; instead use the backslashed versions \?, \+, 
> \{, \|, \(, and \).
> 
> Should } and \} appear in these lists?

No, as '}' is not a meta-character in EREs. The '}' case is different 
and this is discussed in the next sentence.

> 3. In the section "4 Usage":
> 
> $ grep -n -- 'f.*\.c$' *g*.h /dev/null
> 
> The other examples do not begin with $. Perhaps remove $ for greater 
> consistency.

That's easy enough. Also, I noticed that the surrounding explanation is 
a bit wrong, so I fixed that too.

> 4. In the section "4 Usage", perhaps the answer to question 3 would be 
> better if the examples used -* in place of * to search for files that 
> begin with -.

The problem almost always occurs with patterns that begin with "*" and 
unexpectedly match file names beginning with "-", so in some sense it's 
better to leave this example as-is so that it's more-typical.

I installed the attached patch to implement the above. Thanks for your 
feedback.

[0001-doc-improve-examples-and-wording.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

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