[bug-grep] Re: fgrep bug

[Paul Eggert]

[Forwarding this to address@hidden instead, as that's the right place
for grep bug reports these days.]

address@hidden writes:

> http://www.redhat.com/archives/redhat-list/2000-September/msg01325.html

That bug report is mistaken.  POSIX says that file names that begin
with "-" are not portable.  See:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap04.html#tag_04_06

Hence applications cannot rely on the behavior of standard utilities
if they use such file names.  Also, it's standard practice among GNU
utilities to accept trailing options, e.g., "fgrep pattern file -n",
"sort file -n", etc.

> Why the reference to grep not fgrep in the error message?

That sounds like a bug, yes.

> Cannot pass multiple files on same command line.
> fgrep -n 'foo' blah foo
> grep: blah: No such file or directory

Sorry, I don't see any bug here relating to passing multiple files on
the same command line.