Re: problem with egrep and fgrep

[Eric Backus]

"Paul Jarc" <address@hidden> wrote in message 
news:address@hidden
> address@hidden (Bob Proulx) wrote:
> > In it the following is suggested as the best method to find a command
> > on PATH.
>
> That's useful, thanks.
>
> > Since 'grep' has no subprocesses it would seem simpler, if that is
> > what you want to do, to just to set PATH to '@bindir@':$PATH and then
> > execute grep without trying to locate it first.
>
> Works for me.  Or, if anyone cares about touching the environment,
> it's easy enough to check a single directory:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> if test -x '@bindir@'/grep
>  then exec '@bindir@'/grep -E ${1+"$@"}
>  else exec grep -E ${1+"$@"}
> fi

But this still breaks an installation that has a non-GNU grep in /usr/bin, 
mounts a Linux system at /mounts/linux/, and correctly sets PATH to 
/mounts/linux/usr/bin:/usr/bin.  So you break what I would consider a 
"correct" installation, which worked in the past, in order to make your new 
installation work.

Frankly, I'd like to see this done with links, in spite of the coding 
standards.  Grep, like "ls", is a historical special case which is more 
simply handled with links than with various shell-script workarounds.  If 
not links, then we should just go to completely separate copies.

--
Eric Backus