NEWS revision 126432 
1Version 2.4.2
2
3  - Added more check in configure to default the grep-${version}/src/regex.c
4    instead of the one in GNU Lib C.
5
6Version 2.4.1
7
8  - If the final byte of an input file is not a newline, grep now silently
9    supplies one.
10
11  - The new option --binary-files=TYPE makes grep assume that a binary input
12    file is of type TYPE.
13    --binary-files='binary' (the default) outputs a 1-line summary of matches.
14    --binary-files='without-match' assumes binary files do not match.
15    --binary-files='text' treats binary files as text
16	(equivalent to the -a or --text option).
17
18  - New option -I; equivalent to --binary-files='without-match'.
19
20Version 2.4:
21
22  - egrep is now equivalent to `grep -E' as required by POSIX,
23    removing a longstanding source of confusion and incompatibility.
24    `grep' is now more forgiving about stray `{'s, for backward
25    compatibility with traditional egrep.
26
27  - The lower bound of an interval is not optional.
28    You must use an explicit zero, e.g. `x{0,10}' instead of `x{,10}'.
29    (The old documentation incorrectly claimed that it was optional.)
30
31  - The --revert-match option has been renamed to --invert-match.
32
33  - The --fixed-regexp option has been renamed to --fixed-string.
34
35  - New option -H or --with-filename.
36
37  - New option --mmap.  By default, GNU grep now uses read instead of mmap.
38    This is faster on some hosts, and is safer on all.
39
40  - The new option -z or --null-data causes `grep' to treat a zero byte
41    (the ASCII NUL character) as a line terminator in input data, and
42    to treat newlines as ordinary data.
43
44  - The new option -Z or --null causes `grep' to output a zero byte
45    instead of the normal separator after a file name.
46
47  - These two options can be used with commands like `find -print0',
48    `perl -0', `sort -z', and `xargs -0' to process arbitrary file names,
49    even those that contain newlines.
50
51  - The environment variable GREP_OPTIONS specifies default options;
52    e.g. GREP_OPTIONS='--directories=skip' reestablishes grep 2.1's
53    behavior of silently skipping directories.
54
55  - You can specify a matcher multiple times without error, e.g.
56    `grep -E -E' or `fgrep -F'.  It is still an error to specify
57    conflicting matchers.
58
59  - -u and -U are now allowed on non-DOS hosts, and have no effect.
60
61  - Modifications of the tests scripts to go around the "Broken Pipe"
62    errors from bash. See Bash FAQ.
63
64  - New option -r or --recursive or --directories=recurse.
65    (This option was also in grep 2.3, but wasn't announced here.)
66
67  - --without-included-regex disable, was causing bogus reports .i.e
68    doing more harm then good.
69
70Version 2.3:
71
72  - When searching a binary file FOO, grep now just reports
73    `Binary file FOO matches' instead of outputting binary data.
74    This is typically more useful than the old behavior,
75    and it is also more consistent with other utilities like `diff'.
76    A file is considered to be binary if it contains a NUL (i.e. zero) byte.
77
78    The new -a or --text option causes `grep' to assume that all
79    input is text.  (This option has the same meaning as with `diff'.)
80    Use it if you want binary data in your output.
81
82  - `grep' now searches directories just like ordinary files; it no longer
83    silently skips directories.  This is the traditional behavior of
84    Unix text utilities (in particular, of traditional `grep').
85    Hence `grep PATTERN DIRECTORY' should report
86    `grep: DIRECTORY: Is a directory' on hosts where the operating system
87    does not permit programs to read directories directly, and
88    `grep: DIRECTORY: Binary file matches' (or nothing) otherwise.
89
90    The new -d ACTION or --directories=ACTION option affects directory handling.
91    `-d skip' causes `grep' to silently skip directories, as in grep 2.1;
92    `-d read' (the default) causes `grep' to read directories if possible,
93    as in earlier versions of grep.
94
95  - The MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows ports now behave identically to the
96    GNU and Unix ports with respect to binary files and directories.
97
98Version 2.2:
99
100Bug fix release.
101
102  - Status error number fix.
103  - Skipping directories removed.
104  - Many typos fix.
105  - -f /dev/null fix(not to consider as an empty pattern).
106  - Checks for wctype/wchar.
107  - -E was using the wrong matcher fix.
108  - bug in regex char class fix
109  - Fixes for DJGPP
110
111Version 2.1:
112
113This is a bug fix release(see Changelog) i.e. no new features.
114
115  - More compliance to GNU standard.
116  - Long options.
117  - Internationalisation.
118  - Use automake/autoconf.
119  - Directory hierarchy change.
120  - Sigvec with -e on Linux corrected.
121  - Sigvec with -f on Linux corrected.
122  - Sigvec with the mmap() corrected.
123  - Bug in kwset corrected.
124  - -q, -L and -l stop on first match.
125  - New and improve regex.[ch] from Ulrich Drepper.
126  - New and improve dfa.[ch] from Arnold Robbins.
127  - Prototypes for over zealous C compiler.
128  - Not scanning a file, if it's a directory
129    (cause problems on Sun).
130  - Ported to MS-DOS/MS-Windows with DJGPP tools.
131
132See Changelog for the full story and proper credits.
133
134Version 2.0:
135
136The most important user visible change is that egrep and fgrep have
137disappeared as separate programs into the single grep program mandated
138by POSIX 1003.2.  New options -G, -E, and -F have been added,
139selecting grep, egrep, and fgrep behavior respectively.  For
140compatibility with historical practice, hard links named egrep and
141fgrep are also provided.  See the manual page for details.
142
143In addition, the regular expression facilities described in Posix
144draft 11.2 are now supported, except for internationalization features
145related to locale-dependent collating sequence information.
146
147There is a new option, -L, which is like -l except it lists
148files which don't contain matches.  The reason this option was
149added is because '-l -v' doesn't do what you expect.
150
151Performance has been improved; the amount of improvement is platform
152dependent, but (for example) grep 2.0 typically runs at least 30% faster
153than grep 1.6 on a DECstation using the MIPS compiler.  Where possible,
154grep now uses mmap() for file input; on a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1 this
155may cut system time by as much as half, for a total reduction in running
156time by nearly 50%.  On machines that don't use mmap(), the buffering
157code has been rewritten to choose more favorable alignments and buffer
158sizes for read().
159
160Portability has been substantially cleaned up, and an automatic
161configure script is now provided.
162
163The internals have changed in ways too numerous to mention.
164People brave enough to reuse the DFA matcher in other programs
165will now have their bravery amply "rewarded", for the interface
166to that file has been completely changed.  Some changes were
167necessary to track the evolution of the regex package, and since
168I was changing it anyway I decided to do a general cleanup.
169