Bug in grep meta-character ^

[E. Choroba]

Hi,

I think I have found a little bug in grep, I hope it has not been reported yet 
so I do not waste your time.

It seems as if the meta-character ^ matched not just the first character on a
line, but just any character under some circumstances - I discovered this
behaviour while using --color=always, but later I found out it does the same
with -o.

The easiest example I was able to find is this:

$ echo -e "ac\nbb" | grep -o '^.'
a
c
b
b

The "c" and second "b" should not have been there. (On the other hand, '.$'
returns just two lines as it should.)

Additional information you might need:

$ grep --version
grep (GNU grep) 2.5.1
$ cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike)
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i386-redhat-linux-gnu)

        E. Ch.