Re: Bug#454690: "grep -v" alway returns 0

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

Reuben Thomas wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Wacek Kusnierczyk wrote:
>
>> Eduard Bloch wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I want to receive filtered output _and_ receive a return code which
>>>>> tells me whether anything has been filtered in the pipe or not.
>>>>>
>>>> if you learn to ask for help, you're more likely to get a nice
>>>> solution.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I didn't ask your for help, how often shall this be repeated?. I don't
>>> even care about the outcome, I don't maintain the problematic package
>>> anymore and I closed even this bug report. EOD.
>>>
>>
>> blah blah blah.  you can't read your own statements, how could a sane
>> person suggest to help you?  i certainly did not, i don't really care
>> about the probelms you apparently have.
>
> Wacek, I think you're confused: Eduard, who is a Debain maintainer
> (but not of grep) was dealing with a bug report in the Debian bug
> tracking system, which had originally been reported against a
> different package, which he does maintain. The thread was later Cced
> to address@hidden by Aníbal Monsalve Salazar, the Debian maintainer
> of grep, because he thought there was a bug in grep. Eduard was
> pointing out that there was no bug, but that a) the documentation made
> it difficult to understand the behaviour of grep in this case and b)
> the return code of grep -v is arguably not very useful.
>
> The original reporter of the problem was yet another person (Nick
> [only one name visible in the bug report]).
>
> This shows a problem with CCing a reply to an already existing thread
> to another list: it can confuse readers there (in this case, Wacek),
> who don't understand the full context of the conversation; and
> writers, who may not
> realise everything they say is being copied to an entirely different
> context.
>

Reuben,

My last reply was not a reply to the original message, whoever might
have written it, but to Eduard's obviously rude response to my post. 
Whoever Eduard is, I don't care;  I don't care for him being rude
either.  But once he is, a response like mine is an obvious consequence.

Whether grep -v's behaviour is clearly documented and desirable is
another story.

Thanks for the explanation.
vQ