1Version 2.5.1
2  - This is a bugfix release. No new features.
3
4Version 2.5
5  - The new option --label allows to specify a different name for input
6    from stdin. See the man or info pages for details.
7
8  - The internal lib/getopt* files are no longer used on systems providing
9    getopt functionality in their libc (e.g. glibc 2.2.x).
10    If you need the old getopt files, use --with-included-getopt.
11
12  - The new option --only-matching (-o) will print only the part of matching
13    lines that matches the pattern. This is useful, for example, to extract
14    IP addresses from log files.
15
16  - i18n bug fixed ([A-Z0-9] wouldn't match A in locales other than C on
17    systems using recent glibc builds
18
19  - GNU grep can now be built with autoconf 2.52.
20
21  - The new option --devices controls how grep handles device files. Its usage
22    is analogous to --directories.
23
24  - The new option --line-buffered fflush on everyline.  There is a noticeable
25    slow down when forcing line buffering.
26
27  - Back references  are now local to the regex.
28    grep -e '\(a\)\1' -e '\(b\)\1'
29    The last backref \1 in the second expression refer to \(b\)
30
31  - The new option --include=PATTERN will only search matching files
32    when recursing in directories
33
34  - The new option --exclude=PATTERN will skip matching files when
35    recursing in directories.
36
37  - The new option --color will use the environment variable GREP_COLOR
38    (default is red) to highlight the matching string.
39    --color takes an optional argument specifying when to colorize a line:
40      --color=always, --color=tty, --color=never
41
42  - The following changes are for POSIX.2 conformance:
43
44    . The -q or --quiet or --silent option now causes grep to exit
45      with zero status when a input line is selected, even if an error
46      also occurs.
47
48    . The -s or --no-messages option no longer affects the exit status.
49
50    . Bracket regular expressions like [a-z] are now locale-dependent.
51      For example, many locales sort characters in dictionary order,
52      and in these locales the regular expression [a-d] is not
53      equivalent to [abcd]; it might be equivalent to [aBbCcDd], for
54      example.  To obtain the traditional interpretation of bracket
55      expressions, you can use the C locale by setting the LC_ALL
56      environment variable to the value "C".
57
58  - The -C or --context option now requires an argument, partly for
59    consistency, and partly because POSIX.2 recommends against
60    optional arguments.
61
62  - The new -P or --perl-regexp option tells grep to interpert the pattern as
63    a Perl regular expression.
64
65  - The new option --max-count=num makes grep stop reading a file after num
66    matching lines.
67    New option -m; equivalent to --max-count.
68
69  - Translations for bg, ca, da, nb and tr have been added.
70
71Version 2.4.2
72
73  - Added more check in configure to default the grep-${version}/src/regex.c
74    instead of the one in GNU Lib C.
75
76Version 2.4.1
77
78  - If the final byte of an input file is not a newline, grep now silently
79    supplies one.
80
81  - The new option --binary-files=TYPE makes grep assume that a binary input
82    file is of type TYPE.
83    --binary-files='binary' (the default) outputs a 1-line summary of matches.
84    --binary-files='without-match' assumes binary files do not match.
85    --binary-files='text' treats binary files as text
86	(equivalent to the -a or --text option).
87
88  - New option -I; equivalent to --binary-files='without-match'.
89
90Version 2.4:
91
92  - egrep is now equivalent to `grep -E' as required by POSIX,
93    removing a longstanding source of confusion and incompatibility.
94    `grep' is now more forgiving about stray `{'s, for backward
95    compatibility with traditional egrep.
96
97  - The lower bound of an interval is not optional.
98    You must use an explicit zero, e.g. `x{0,10}' instead of `x{,10}'.
99    (The old documentation incorrectly claimed that it was optional.)
100
101  - The --revert-match option has been renamed to --invert-match.
102
103  - The --fixed-regexp option has been renamed to --fixed-string.
104
105  - New option -H or --with-filename.
106
107  - New option --mmap.  By default, GNU grep now uses read instead of mmap.
108    This is faster on some hosts, and is safer on all.
109
110  - The new option -z or --null-data causes `grep' to treat a zero byte
111    (the ASCII NUL character) as a line terminator in input data, and
112    to treat newlines as ordinary data.
113
114  - The new option -Z or --null causes `grep' to output a zero byte
115    instead of the normal separator after a file name.
116
117  - These two options can be used with commands like `find -print0',
118    `perl -0', `sort -z', and `xargs -0' to process arbitrary file names,
119    even those that contain newlines.
120
121  - The environment variable GREP_OPTIONS specifies default options;
122    e.g. GREP_OPTIONS='--directories=skip' reestablishes grep 2.1's
123    behavior of silently skipping directories.
124
125  - You can specify a matcher multiple times without error, e.g.
126    `grep -E -E' or `fgrep -F'.  It is still an error to specify
127    conflicting matchers.
128
129  - -u and -U are now allowed on non-DOS hosts, and have no effect.
130
131  - Modifications of the tests scripts to go around the "Broken Pipe"
132    errors from bash. See Bash FAQ.
133
134  - New option -r or --recursive or --directories=recurse.
135    (This option was also in grep 2.3, but wasn't announced here.)
136
137  - --without-included-regex disable, was causing bogus reports .i.e
138    doing more harm then good.
139
140Version 2.3:
141
142  - When searching a binary file FOO, grep now just reports
143    `Binary file FOO matches' instead of outputting binary data.
144    This is typically more useful than the old behavior,
145    and it is also more consistent with other utilities like `diff'.
146    A file is considered to be binary if it contains a NUL (i.e. zero) byte.
147
148    The new -a or --text option causes `grep' to assume that all
149    input is text.  (This option has the same meaning as with `diff'.)
150    Use it if you want binary data in your output.
151
152  - `grep' now searches directories just like ordinary files; it no longer
153    silently skips directories.  This is the traditional behavior of
154    Unix text utilities (in particular, of traditional `grep').
155    Hence `grep PATTERN DIRECTORY' should report
156    `grep: DIRECTORY: Is a directory' on hosts where the operating system
157    does not permit programs to read directories directly, and
158    `grep: DIRECTORY: Binary file matches' (or nothing) otherwise.
159
160    The new -d ACTION or --directories=ACTION option affects directory handling.
161    `-d skip' causes `grep' to silently skip directories, as in grep 2.1;
162    `-d read' (the default) causes `grep' to read directories if possible,
163    as in earlier versions of grep.
164
165  - The MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows ports now behave identically to the
166    GNU and Unix ports with respect to binary files and directories.
167
168Version 2.2:
169
170Bug fix release.
171
172  - Status error number fix.
173  - Skipping directories removed.
174  - Many typos fix.
175  - -f /dev/null fix(not to consider as an empty pattern).
176  - Checks for wctype/wchar.
177  - -E was using the wrong matcher fix.
178  - bug in regex char class fix
179  - Fixes for DJGPP
180
181Version 2.1:
182
183This is a bug fix release(see Changelog) i.e. no new features.
184
185  - More compliance to GNU standard.
186  - Long options.
187  - Internationalisation.
188  - Use automake/autoconf.
189  - Directory hierarchy change.
190  - Sigvec with -e on Linux corrected.
191  - Sigvec with -f on Linux corrected.
192  - Sigvec with the mmap() corrected.
193  - Bug in kwset corrected.
194  - -q, -L and -l stop on first match.
195  - New and improve regex.[ch] from Ulrich Drepper.
196  - New and improve dfa.[ch] from Arnold Robbins.
197  - Prototypes for over zealous C compiler.
198  - Not scanning a file, if it's a directory
199    (cause problems on Sun).
200  - Ported to MS-DOS/MS-Windows with DJGPP tools.
201
202See Changelog for the full story and proper credits.
203
204Version 2.0:
205
206The most important user visible change is that egrep and fgrep have
207disappeared as separate programs into the single grep program mandated
208by POSIX 1003.2.  New options -G, -E, and -F have been added,
209selecting grep, egrep, and fgrep behavior respectively.  For
210compatibility with historical practice, hard links named egrep and
211fgrep are also provided.  See the manual page for details.
212
213In addition, the regular expression facilities described in Posix
214draft 11.2 are now supported, except for internationalization features
215related to locale-dependent collating sequence information.
216
217There is a new option, -L, which is like -l except it lists
218files which don't contain matches.  The reason this option was
219added is because '-l -v' doesn't do what you expect.
220
221Performance has been improved; the amount of improvement is platform
222dependent, but (for example) grep 2.0 typically runs at least 30% faster
223than grep 1.6 on a DECstation using the MIPS compiler.  Where possible,
224grep now uses mmap() for file input; on a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1 this
225may cut system time by as much as half, for a total reduction in running
226time by nearly 50%.  On machines that don't use mmap(), the buffering
227code has been rewritten to choose more favorable alignments and buffer
228sizes for read().
229
230Portability has been substantially cleaned up, and an automatic
231configure script is now provided.
232
233The internals have changed in ways too numerous to mention.
234People brave enough to reuse the DFA matcher in other programs
235will now have their bravery amply "rewarded", for the interface
236to that file has been completely changed.  Some changes were
237necessary to track the evolution of the regex package, and since
238I was changing it anyway I decided to do a general cleanup.
239