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[bug-grep] doc bug in grep; PATTERN implies a regexp used in --include o


From: Jack Eidsness
Subject: [bug-grep] doc bug in grep; PATTERN implies a regexp used in --include or --exclude
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:55:39 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9+ (Windows/20041108)

Hi -

I was kind of thrown off and confused when trying to do a recursive (-R) grep search recently, and did some looking around to find out why. When reading the man page or "usage" output of grep (although the HTML doc on gnu.org seems closer to accurate although still somewhat inscrutable on this point), it says this:

  --include=PATTERN
  --exclude=PATTERN

In the other parts of the documentation, PATTERN refers to a regexp, but in this situation, the PATTERN in question is passed on to the system's fnmatch function. I looked through the viewcvs on savanna.gnu.org to find this.

Could the documentation be updated to indicate that these two arguments are not regexps? I think it would be appropriate to just say that the pattern is not used as a regexp, and is used by the system's fnmatch function.

On the online HTML docs, it at least says "file_pattern", but I dont think most people will know that that means it will be treated differently. I am referring to these:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/doc/grep_3.html#SEC3

Thanks very much for your work on this fabulous software!

-Jack Eidsness




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