GNU bug report logs - #48948
grep documentation feedback

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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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