Re: Unsupported grep options

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Jamboretz, Chris wrote:
> First let me say thanks for providing this set of tools.

You are welcome. :-)

> I've found some unsupported command line options and the first three are
> probably the biggest concern:
>
> --silent
> -P  --perl-regexp
> --colour

I can easily implement these, but is --colour really needed? I generally 
dislike implementing spelling variations, but this one is specially 
confusing because GNU grep does accept an environment variable named 
GREP_COLORS but none named GREP_COLOURS.

> others are
>
> -G  --basic-regexp
> -U  --binary
> -u  --unix-byte-offsets

'-u, --unix-byte-offsets' is going to be removed next year from GNU grep:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/plain/src/grep.c
      case 'u':
        /* Obsolete option; it had no effect; FIXME: remove in 2023  */
        error (0, 0, _("warning: --unix-byte-offsets (-u) is obsolete"));
        break;


> -T  --initial-tab
> -NUM

I don't see how -NUM can be implemented while respecting the syntax of 
command line arguments[1] where '-23' would mean '-C2 -C3', not '-C23'. I 
would recommend to use -C instead of the non-standard grep "option" -NUM.

[1] 
http://www.nongnu.org/arg-parser/manual/arg_parser_manual.html#Argument-syntax

> --line-buffered
> --label=LABEL

No problem with these either.

I'll release a new version of zutils with the new options ASAP (in a few days).

Best regards,
Antonio.