NEWS revision 131555
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