Subject: Re: bug#57613: grep man page tries to rewrite POSIX history

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2022 14:28:12 -0500

On 9/6/22 07:28, Geoff Clare wrote:
> They were included in POSIX.2-1992 but marked as obsolescent.

Ouch, as I recall reading POSIX.2-1992 and seeing egrep and fgrep 
mentioned, but not as part of the standard. I guess I misread the 
standard. I am away from my printed copy and so cannot easily check this 
now.

I installed the attached which I hope clears this up.
From 216f754287f2123f45d274f0a003182524efd43d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2022 13:52:12 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Fix obsolescence doc for egrep, fgrep

---
 doc/grep.texi | 6 +++---
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/grep.texi b/doc/grep.texi
index 9f2f225..c371172 100644
--- a/doc/grep.texi
+++ b/doc/grep.texi
@@ -2105,9 +2105,9 @@ What happened to @command{egrep} and @command{fgrep}?
 that were the counterparts of the modern @samp{grep -E} and @samp{grep -F}.
 Although breaking up @command{grep} into three programs was perhaps
 useful on the small computers of the 1970s, @command{egrep} and
-@command{fgrep} were not standardized by POSIX and are no longer needed.
-In the current GNU implementation, @command{egrep} and @command{fgrep}
-issue a warning and then act like their modern counterparts;
+@command{fgrep} were deemed obsolescent by POSIX in 1992,
+removed from POSIX in 2001, deprecated by GNU Grep 2.5.3 in 2007,
+and changed to issue obsolescence warnings by GNU Grep 3.8 in 2022;
 eventually, they are planned to be removed entirely.
 
 If you prefer the old names, you can use use your own substitutes,
-- 
2.37.2