Re: fgrep bug

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

thank you for taking care to report the bugs.
A small technical note: the bug report address has changed; please use
address@hidden for further mail/reports.

> fgrep foo blah --- blah # that's three - signs
> grep: unrecognized option `---'

> Why the reference to grep not fgrep in the error message?

fgrep is not standardized by POSIX; the POSIX equivalent is ``grep -F''.

Accordingly, recent versions of GNU grep install fgrep as a shell wrapper
around grep.

> Cannot pass multiple files on same command line.

Yes, you can.  The problem with the command above is that ``---''
looks like an option.  Use ``--'' to terminate the option list:

fgrep -n -- foo blah --- blah

Alternatively, you can set POSIXLY_CORRECT to tell grep that options may
not be interspersed with the other arguments:

$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 fgrep x slon --- Makefile
grep: slon: No such file or directory
grep: ---: No such file or directory
Makefile:x:
Makefile:BB = x

> fgrep -n 'foo' blah foo
> grep: blah: No such file or directory

grep should continue to search file ``foo'' here.  I have verified that
the latest version, GNU grep 2.5.1, works this way:

$ fgrep -n x slon Makefile
grep: slon: No such file or directory
Makefile:6:x:
Makefile:9:BB = x

Regards,
        Stepan Kasal