grep : problem with locale

[Sylvain]

Hi !

There is a little problem with the man page :
Finally, certain named classes of characters are predefined within bracket 
expressions, as follows. Their names are self explanatory, and they are 
[:alnum:], [:alpha:], [:cntrl:], [:digit:], [:graph:], [:lower:], [:print:], 
[:punct:], [:space:], [:upper:], and [:xdigit:]. For example, [[:alnum:]] 
means [0-9A-Za-z], except the latter form depends upon the C locale and the 
ASCII character encoding, whereas the former is independent of locale and 
character set. (Note that the brackets in these class names are part of the 
symbolic names, and must be included in addition to the brackets delimiting 
the bracket list.) Most metacharacters lose their special meaning inside 
lists. To include a literal ] place it first in the list. Similarly, to 
include a literal ^ place it anywhere but first. Finally, to include a 
literal - place it last.

The interessant sentence is : "whereas the former is independent of locale 
and character set"

-----------

export address@hidden

export address@hidden

echo "é" | egrep "[[:alpha:]]"

=> é

echo "é" | egrep "[a-zA-Z]"

=> é

echo "é" | egrep "[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]"

-----------

export LANG=en_us

export LC_ALL=en_us

echo "é" | egrep "[[:alpha:]]"

echo "é" | egrep "[a-zA-Z]"

echo "é" | egrep "[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]"

-----------

So the [[:alpha:]] class is locale dependant contrary of the doc say.. No ?



Have a nice day

Sylvain,

from France so sorry for my bad english :)