Subject: bug#50852: [PATCH] Fix search of the look program.

From: André A. Gomes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 11:32:39 +0300

Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]> writes:

>> There's another aspect worth discussing.  The look program doesn't have
>> the -r flag (as of today), but ispell handles this case (look at
>> ispell-look-options).  It seems that look was published around 1979.
>> Perhaps it's time to deprecate this flag?
>
> Does that apply to all versions of look or just the GNU one?

I don't think there's a GNU one, since it's not part of the GNU
coreutils.

Here's what the man page say:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
The look utility appeared in Version 7 AT&T Unix.

The look command is part of the util-linux  package  and  is  available
       from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

>From the first sentence I inferred that it appeared in 1979.

I had a look at the "look" program both on my GNU/Linux machine and on a
modern Mac laptop.  Both have the same "look", none have the "-r" flag.

-- 
André A. Gomes
"Free Thought, Free World"