source: vendor/grep/2.12/NEWS@ 3138

Last change on this file since 3138 was 2595, checked in by bird, 13 years ago

gnu grep version 2.12 (grep-2.12.tar.xz, md5sum=8d2f0346d08b13c18afb81f0e8aa1e2f)

File size: 21.7 KB
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1GNU grep NEWS -*- outline -*-
2
3* Noteworthy changes in release 2.12 (2012-04-23) [stable]
4
5** Bug fixes
6
7 "echo P|grep --devices=skip P" once again prints P, as it did in 2.10
8 [bug introduced in grep-2.11]
9
10 grep no longer segfaults with -r --exclude-dir and no file operand.
11 I.e., ":|grep -r --exclude-dir=D PAT" would segfault.
12 [bug introduced in grep-2.11]
13
14 Recursive grep now uses fts for directory traversal, so it can
15 handle much-larger directories without reporting things like "File
16 name too long", and it can run much faster when dealing with large
17 directory hierarchies. [bug present since the beginning]
18
19 grep -E 'a{1000000000}' now reports an overflow error rather than
20 silently acting like grep -E 'a\{1000000000}'.
21
22** New features
23
24 The -R option now has a long-option alias --dereference-recursive.
25
26** Changes in behavior
27
28 The -r (--recursive) option now follows only command-line symlinks.
29 Also, by default -r now reads a device only if it is named on the command
30 line; this can be overridden with --devices. -R acts as before, so
31 use -R if you prefer the old behavior of following all symlinks and
32 defaulting to reading all devices.
33
34
35* Noteworthy changes in release 2.11 (2012-03-02) [stable]
36
37** Bug fixes
38
39 grep no longer dumps core on lines whose lengths do not fit in 'int'.
40 (e.g., lines longer than 2 GiB on a typical 64-bit host).
41 Instead, grep either works as expected, or reports an error.
42 An error can occur if not enough main memory is available, or if the
43 GNU C library's regular expression functions cannot handle such long lines.
44 [bug present since "the beginning"]
45
46 The -m, -A, -B, and -C options no longer mishandle context line
47 counts that do not fit in 'int'. Also, grep -c's counts are now
48 limited by the type 'intmax_t' (typically less than 2**63) rather
49 than 'int' (typically less than 2**31).
50
51 grep no longer silently suppresses errors when reading a directory
52 as if it were a text file. For example, "grep x ." now reports a
53 read error on most systems; formerly, it ignored the error.
54 [bug introduced in grep-2.5]
55
56 grep now exits with status 2 if a directory loop is found,
57 instead of possibly exiting with status 0 or 1.
58 [bug introduced in grep-2.3]
59
60 The -s option now suppresses certain input error diagnostics that it
61 formerly failed to suppress. These include errors when closing the
62 input, when lseeking the input, and when the input is also the output.
63 [bug introduced in grep-2.4]
64
65 On POSIX systems, commands like "grep PAT < FILE >> FILE"
66 now report an error instead of looping.
67 [bug present since "the beginning"]
68
69 The --include, --exclude, and --exclude-dir options now handle
70 command-line arguments more consistently. --include and --exclude
71 apply only to non-directories and --exclude-dir applies only to
72 directories. "-" (standard input) is never excluded, since it is
73 not a file name.
74 [bug introduced in grep-2.5]
75
76 grep no longer rejects "grep -qr . > out", i.e., when run with -q
77 and an input file is the same as the output file, since with -q
78 grep generates no output, so there is no risk of infinite loop or
79 of an output-affecting race condition. Thus, the use of the following
80 options also disables the input-equals-output failure:
81 --max-count=N (-m) (for N >= 2)
82 --files-with-matches (-l)
83 --files-without-match (-L)
84 [bug introduced in grep-2.10]
85
86 grep no longer emits an error message and quits on MS-Windows when
87 invoked with the -r option.
88
89 grep no longer misinterprets some alternations involving anchors
90 (^, $, \< \> \B, \b). For example, grep -E "(^|\B)a" no
91 longer reports a match for the string "x a".
92 [bug present since "the beginning"]
93
94** New features
95
96 If no file operand is given, and a command-line -r or equivalent
97 option is given, grep now searches the working directory. Formerly
98 grep ignored the -r and searched standard input nonrecursively.
99 An -r found in GREP_OPTIONS does not have this new effect.
100
101 grep now supports color highlighting of matches on MS-Windows.
102
103** Changes in behavior
104
105 Use of the --mmap option now elicits a warning. It has been a no-op
106 since March of 2010.
107
108 grep no longer diagnoses write errors repeatedly; it exits after
109 diagnosing the first write error. This is better behavior when
110 writing to a dangling pipe.
111
112 Syntax errors in GREP_COLORS are now ignored, instead of sometimes
113 eliciting warnings. This is more consistent with programs that
114 (e.g.) ignore errors in termcap entries.
115
116* Noteworthy changes in release 2.10 (2011-11-16) [stable]
117
118** Bug fixes
119
120 grep no longer mishandles high-bit-set pattern bytes on systems
121 where "char" is a signed type. [bug appears to affect only MS-Windows]
122
123 On POSIX systems, grep now rejects a command like "grep -r pattern . > out",
124 in which the output file is also one of the inputs,
125 because it can result in an "infinite" disk-filling loop.
126 [bug present since "the beginning"]
127
128** Build-related
129
130 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
131 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
132 only .tar.xz files is enough.
133
134
135* Noteworthy changes in release 2.9 (2011-06-21) [stable]
136
137** Bug fixes
138
139 grep no longer clobbers heap for an ERE like '(^| )*( |$)'
140 [bug introduced in grep-2.6]
141
142 grep is faster on regular expressions that match multibyte characters
143 in brackets (such as '[áéíóú]').
144
145 echo c|grep '[c]' would fail for any c in 0x80..0xff, with a uni-byte
146 encoding for which the byte-to-wide-char mapping is nontrivial. For
147 example, the ISO-88591 locales are not affected, but ru_RU.KOI8-R is.
148 [bug introduced in grep-2.6]
149
150 grep -P no longer aborts when PCRE's backtracking limit is exceeded
151 Before, echo aaaaaaaaaaaaaab |grep -P '((a+)*)+$' would abort. Now,
152 it diagnoses the problem and exits with status 2.
153
154
155* Noteworthy changes in release 2.8 (2011-05-13) [stable]
156
157** Bug fixes
158
159 echo c|grep '[c]' would fail for any c in 0x80..0xff, and in many locales.
160 E.g., printf '\xff\n'|grep "$(printf '[\xff]')" || echo FAIL
161 would print FAIL rather than the required matching line.
162 [bug introduced in grep-2.6]
163
164 grep's interpretation of range expression is now more consistent with
165 that of other tools. [bug present since multi-byte character set
166 support was introduced in 2.5.2, though the steps needed to reproduce
167 it changed in grep-2.6]
168
169 grep erroneously returned with exit status 1 on some memory allocation
170 failure. [bug present since "the beginning"]
171
172
173* Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2010-09-16) [stable]
174
175** Bug fixes
176
177 grep --include=FILE works once again, rather than working like --exclude=FILE
178 [bug introduced in grep-2.6]
179
180 Searching with grep -Fw for an empty string would not match an
181 empty line. [bug present since "the beginning"]
182
183 X{0,0} is implemented correctly. It used to be a synonym of X{0,1}.
184 [bug present since "the beginning"]
185
186 In multibyte locales, regular expressions including backreferences
187 no longer exhibit quadratic complexity (i.e., they are orders
188 of magnitude faster). [bug present since multi-byte character set
189 support was introduced in 2.5.2]
190
191 In UTF-8 locales, regular expressions including "." can be orders
192 of magnitude faster. For example, "grep ." is now twice as fast
193 as "grep -v ^$", instead of being immensely slower. It remains
194 slow in other multibyte locales. [bug present since multi-byte
195 character set support was introduced in 2.5.2]
196
197 --mmap was meant to be ignored in 2.6.x, but it was instead
198 removed by mistake. [bug introduced in 2.6]
199
200** New features
201
202 grep now diagnoses (and fails with exit status 2) commonly mistyped
203 regular expression like [:space:], [:digit:], etc. Before, those were
204 silently interpreted as [ac:eps] and [dgit:] respectively. Virtually
205 all who make that class of mistake should have used [[:space:]] or
206 [[:digit:]]. This new behavior is disabled when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
207 environment variable is set.
208
209 On systems using glibc, grep can support equivalence classes. However,
210 whether they actually work depends on glibc's locale definitions.
211
212* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2010-04-02) [stable]
213
214** Bug fixes
215
216 Searching with grep -F for an empty string in a multibyte locale
217 would hang grep. [bug introduced in 2.6.2]
218
219 PCRE support is once again detected on systems with <pcre/pcre.h>
220 [bug introduced in 2.6.2]
221
222
223* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2010-03-29) [stable]
224
225** Bug fixes
226
227 grep -F no longer mistakenly reports a match when searching
228 for an incomplete prefix of a multibyte character.
229 [bug present since "the beginning"]
230
231 grep -F no longer goes into an infinite loop when it finds a match for an
232 incomplete (non-prefix of a) multibyte character. [bug introduced in 2.6]
233
234 Using any of the --include or --exclude* options would cause a NULL
235 dereference. [bugs introduced in 2.6]
236
237** Build-related
238
239 configure no longer relies on pkg-config to detect PCRE support.
240
241
242* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2010-03-25) [stable]
243
244** Bug fixes
245
246 Character classes could cause a segmentation fault if they included a
247 multibyte character. [bug introduced in 2.6]
248
249 Character ranges would not work in single-byte character sets other
250 than C (for example, ISO-8859-1 or KOI8-R) and some multi-byte locales.
251 For example, this should print "1", but would find no match:
252 $ echo 1 | env -i LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 grep '[0-9]'
253 [bug introduced in 2.6]
254
255 The output of grep was incorrect for whole-word (-w) matches if the
256 patterns included a back-reference. [bug introduced in grep-2.5.2]
257
258** Portability
259
260 Avoid a link failure on Solaris 8.
261
262
263* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2010-03-23) [stable]
264
265** Speed improvements
266
267 grep is much faster on multibyte character sets, especially (but not
268 limited to) UTF-8 character sets. The speed improvement is also very
269 pronounced with case-insensitive matches.
270
271** Bug fixes
272
273 Character classes would malfunction in multi-byte locales when using grep -i.
274 Examples which would print nothing for LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 include:
275 - for ranges, echo Z | grep -i '[a-z]'
276 - for single characters, echo Y | grep -i '[y]'
277 - for character types, echo Y | grep -i '[[:lower:]]'
278
279 grep -i -o would fail to report some matches; grep -i --color, while not
280 missing any line containing a match, would fail to color some matches.
281
282 grep would fail to report a match in a multibyte character set other than
283 UTF-8, if another match occurred earlier in the line but started in the
284 middle of a multibyte character.
285
286 Various bugs in grep -P, caused by expressions such as [^b] or \S matching
287 newlines, were fixed. grep -P also supports the special sequences \Z and
288 \z, and can be combined with the command-line option -z to perform searches
289 on NUL-separated records.
290
291 grep would mistakenly exit with status 1 upon error, rather than 2,
292 as it is documented to do.
293
294 Using options like -1 -2 or -1 -v -2 results in two lines of
295 context (the last value that appears on the command line) instead
296 twelve (the concatenation of all the values). This is consistent
297 with the behavior of options -A/-B/-C.
298
299 Two new command-line options, --group-separator=ARGUMENT and
300 --no-group-separator, enable further customization of the output
301 when -A, -B or -C is being used.
302
303** Other changes
304
305 egrep accepts the -E option and fgrep accepts the -F option. If egrep
306 and fgrep are given another of the -E/-F/-G options, they print a more
307 meaningful error message.
308
309* Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.4 (2009-02-10) [stable]
310
311 - This is a bugfix release. No new features.
312
313Version 2.5.3
314 - The new option --exclude-dir allows to specify a directory pattern that
315 will be excluded from recursive grep.
316 - Numerous bug fixes
317
318Version 2.5.1
319 - This is a bugfix release. No new features.
320
321Version 2.5
322 - The new option --label allows to specify a different name for input
323 from stdin. See the man or info pages for details.
324
325 - The internal lib/getopt* files are no longer used on systems providing
326 getopt functionality in their libc (e.g. glibc 2.2.x).
327 If you need the old getopt files, use --with-included-getopt.
328
329 - The new option --only-matching (-o) will print only the part of matching
330 lines that matches the pattern. This is useful, for example, to extract
331 IP addresses from log files.
332
333 - i18n bug fixed ([A-Z0-9] wouldn't match A in locales other than C on
334 systems using recent glibc builds
335
336 - GNU grep can now be built with autoconf 2.52.
337
338 - The new option --devices controls how grep handles device files. Its usage
339 is analogous to --directories.
340
341 - The new option --line-buffered fflush on everyline. There is a noticeable
342 slow down when forcing line buffering.
343
344 - Back references are now local to the regex.
345 grep -e '\(a\)\1' -e '\(b\)\1'
346 The last backref \1 in the second expression refer to \(b\)
347
348 - The new option --include=PATTERN will search only matching files
349 when recursing in directories
350
351 - The new option --exclude=PATTERN will skip matching files when
352 recursing in directories.
353
354 - The new option --color will use the environment variable GREP_COLOR
355 (default is red) to highlight the matching string.
356 --color takes an optional argument specifying when to colorize a line:
357 --color=always, --color=tty, --color=never
358
359 - The following changes are for POSIX.2 conformance:
360
361 . The -q or --quiet or --silent option now causes grep to exit
362 with zero status when a input line is selected, even if an error
363 also occurs.
364
365 . The -s or --no-messages option no longer affects the exit status.
366
367 . Bracket regular expressions like [a-z] are now locale-dependent.
368 For example, many locales sort characters in dictionary order,
369 and in these locales the regular expression [a-d] is not
370 equivalent to [abcd]; it might be equivalent to [aBbCcDd], for
371 example. To obtain the traditional interpretation of bracket
372 expressions, you can use the C locale by setting the LC_ALL
373 environment variable to the value "C".
374
375 - The -C or --context option now requires an argument, partly for
376 consistency, and partly because POSIX.2 recommends against
377 optional arguments.
378
379 - The new -P or --perl-regexp option tells grep to interpret the pattern as
380 a Perl regular expression.
381
382 - The new option --max-count=num makes grep stop reading a file after num
383 matching lines.
384 New option -m; equivalent to --max-count.
385
386 - Translations for bg, ca, da, nb and tr have been added.
387
388Version 2.4.2
389
390 - Added more check in configure to default the grep-${version}/src/regex.c
391 instead of the one in GNU Lib C.
392
393Version 2.4.1
394
395 - If the final byte of an input file is not a newline, grep now silently
396 supplies one.
397
398 - The new option --binary-files=TYPE makes grep assume that a binary input
399 file is of type TYPE.
400 --binary-files='binary' (the default) outputs a 1-line summary of matches.
401 --binary-files='without-match' assumes binary files do not match.
402 --binary-files='text' treats binary files as text
403 (equivalent to the -a or --text option).
404
405 - New option -I; equivalent to --binary-files='without-match'.
406
407Version 2.4:
408
409 - egrep is now equivalent to `grep -E' as required by POSIX,
410 removing a longstanding source of confusion and incompatibility.
411 `grep' is now more forgiving about stray `{'s, for backward
412 compatibility with traditional egrep.
413
414 - The lower bound of an interval is not optional.
415 You must use an explicit zero, e.g. `x{0,10}' instead of `x{,10}'.
416 (The old documentation incorrectly claimed that it was optional.)
417
418 - The --revert-match option has been renamed to --invert-match.
419
420 - The --fixed-regexp option has been renamed to --fixed-string.
421
422 - New option -H or --with-filename.
423
424 - New option --mmap. By default, GNU grep now uses read instead of mmap.
425 This is faster on some hosts, and is safer on all.
426
427 - The new option -z or --null-data causes `grep' to treat a zero byte
428 (the ASCII NUL character) as a line terminator in input data, and
429 to treat newlines as ordinary data.
430
431 - The new option -Z or --null causes `grep' to output a zero byte
432 instead of the normal separator after a file name.
433
434 - These two options can be used with commands like `find -print0',
435 `perl -0', `sort -z', and `xargs -0' to process arbitrary file names,
436 even those that contain newlines.
437
438 - The environment variable GREP_OPTIONS specifies default options;
439 e.g. GREP_OPTIONS='--directories=skip' reestablishes grep 2.1's
440 behavior of silently skipping directories.
441
442 - You can specify a matcher multiple times without error, e.g.
443 `grep -E -E' or `fgrep -F'. It is still an error to specify
444 conflicting matchers.
445
446 - -u and -U are now allowed on non-DOS hosts, and have no effect.
447
448 - Modifications of the tests scripts to go around the "Broken Pipe"
449 errors from bash. See Bash FAQ.
450
451 - New option -r or --recursive or --directories=recurse.
452 (This option was also in grep 2.3, but wasn't announced here.)
453
454 - --without-included-regex disable, was causing bogus reports .i.e
455 doing more harm then good.
456
457Version 2.3:
458
459 - When searching a binary file FOO, grep now just reports
460 `Binary file FOO matches' instead of outputting binary data.
461 This is typically more useful than the old behavior,
462 and it is also more consistent with other utilities like `diff'.
463 A file is considered to be binary if it contains a NUL (i.e. zero) byte.
464
465 The new -a or --text option causes `grep' to assume that all
466 input is text. (This option has the same meaning as with `diff'.)
467 Use it if you want binary data in your output.
468
469 - `grep' now searches directories just like ordinary files; it no longer
470 silently skips directories. This is the traditional behavior of
471 Unix text utilities (in particular, of traditional `grep').
472 Hence `grep PATTERN DIRECTORY' should report
473 `grep: DIRECTORY: Is a directory' on hosts where the operating system
474 does not permit programs to read directories directly, and
475 `grep: DIRECTORY: Binary file matches' (or nothing) otherwise.
476
477 The new -d ACTION or --directories=ACTION option affects directory handling.
478 `-d skip' causes `grep' to silently skip directories, as in grep 2.1;
479 `-d read' (the default) causes `grep' to read directories if possible,
480 as in earlier versions of grep.
481
482 - The MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows ports now behave identically to the
483 GNU and Unix ports with respect to binary files and directories.
484
485Version 2.2:
486
487Bug fix release.
488
489 - Status error number fix.
490 - Skipping directories removed.
491 - Many typos fix.
492 - -f /dev/null fix(not to consider as an empty pattern).
493 - Checks for wctype/wchar.
494 - -E was using the wrong matcher fix.
495 - bug in regex char class fix
496 - Fixes for DJGPP
497
498Version 2.1:
499
500This is a bug fix release(see Changelog) i.e. no new features.
501
502 - More compliance to GNU standard.
503 - Long options.
504 - Internationalization.
505 - Use automake/autoconf.
506 - Directory hierarchy change.
507 - Sigvec with -e on Linux corrected.
508 - Sigvec with -f on Linux corrected.
509 - Sigvec with the mmap() corrected.
510 - Bug in kwset corrected.
511 - -q, -L and -l stop on first match.
512 - New and improve regex.[ch] from Ulrich Drepper.
513 - New and improve dfa.[ch] from Arnold Robbins.
514 - Prototypes for over zealous C compiler.
515 - Not scanning a file, if it's a directory
516 (cause problems on Sun).
517 - Ported to MS-DOS/MS-Windows with DJGPP tools.
518
519See Changelog for the full story and proper credits.
520
521Version 2.0:
522
523The most important user visible change is that egrep and fgrep have
524disappeared as separate programs into the single grep program mandated
525by POSIX 1003.2. New options -G, -E, and -F have been added,
526selecting grep, egrep, and fgrep behavior respectively. For
527compatibility with historical practice, hard links named egrep and
528fgrep are also provided. See the manual page for details.
529
530In addition, the regular expression facilities described in Posix
531draft 11.2 are now supported, except for internationalization features
532related to locale-dependent collating sequence information.
533
534There is a new option, -L, which is like -l except it lists
535files which don't contain matches. The reason this option was
536added is because '-l -v' doesn't do what you expect.
537
538Performance has been improved; the amount of improvement is platform
539dependent, but (for example) grep 2.0 typically runs at least 30% faster
540than grep 1.6 on a DECstation using the MIPS compiler. Where possible,
541grep now uses mmap() for file input; on a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1 this
542may cut system time by as much as half, for a total reduction in running
543time by nearly 50%. On machines that don't use mmap(), the buffering
544code has been rewritten to choose more favorable alignments and buffer
545sizes for read().
546
547Portability has been substantially cleaned up, and an automatic
548configure script is now provided.
549
550The internals have changed in ways too numerous to mention.
551People brave enough to reuse the DFA matcher in other programs
552will now have their bravery amply "rewarded", for the interface
553to that file has been completely changed. Some changes were
554necessary to track the evolution of the regex package, and since
555I was changing it anyway I decided to do a general cleanup.
556
557========================================================================
558Copyright (C) 1992, 1997-2002, 2004-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
559
560 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
561 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
562 notice and this notice are preserved.
563
564Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
565under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
566any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
567Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
568Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
569Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.
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