GNU bug report logs -
#48948
grep documentation feedback
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Reported by: David Apps <sppa.divad <at> virgin.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2021 19:52:01 UTC
Severity: normal
Done: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.
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Your message dated Thu, 10 Jun 2021 16:10:35 -0700
with message-id <21c8d714-7b06-d580-94c2-cbf2410dc1b8 <at> cs.ucla.edu>
and subject line Re: bug#48948: grep documentation feedback
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #48948,
regarding grep documentation feedback
to be marked as done.
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help-debbugs <at> gnu.org.)
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48948: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=48948
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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
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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)]
This bug report was last modified 4 years and 40 days ago.
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