Serious bug in regexps (eg., grep 2.5.1)

[Wayne Hayes]

Version:

Running Red Hat 8.0, /bin/grep --version says "grep (GNU grep) 2.5.1".
This bug also affects gawk 3.1.1, so I'm guessing it might be in a
common regexp library that they may use, but I don't know enough to
delve further.

The Bug:

grep '^[a-z]' returns lines beginning with both upper and lower case letters.
Plus, it runs about 100 times slower than version 2.4.2.  Possibly these
"features" are related.

gawk '/^[a-z]/{print}' has the same problem.

I couldn't find any references to this bug on RedHat's bugzilla web site.

-- 
"If I can't have smart software, then I   || Wayne Hayes, address@hidden
want dumb software that knows it is dumb, ||  Astrophysics & Computer Science
not dumb software that thinks it is       || http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~wayne
smart." - J. Fieber, RISKS 20.63          ||