From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 22 12:35:29 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55FB837B404 for ; Sun, 22 Jun 2003 12:35:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.des.no (37.80-203-228.nextgentel.com [80.203.228.37]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9AA5643FB1 for ; Sun, 22 Jun 2003 12:35:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: by smtp.des.no (Postfix, from userid 666) id 8D0CA9595C; Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:35:26 +0200 (CEST) Received: from dwp.des.no (dwp.des.no [10.0.0.4]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id B67DC95958; Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:35:25 +0200 (CEST) Received: by dwp.des.no (Postfix, from userid 2602) id 6EFD6B86B; Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:35:25 +0200 (CEST) To: Sean Farley References: <20030621103502.K18572@thor.farley.org> <20030622005852.GB59673@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <20030622092848.R28123@thor.farley.org> From: des@des.no (Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?q?Sm=F8rgrav?=) Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 21:35:25 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20030622092848.R28123@thor.farley.org> (Sean Farley's message of "Sun, 22 Jun 2003 11:41:05 -0500 (CDT)") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.090024 (Oort Gnus v0.24) Emacs/21.2 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.0 required=8.0 tests=EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,REFERENCES, REPLY_WITH_QUOTES,USER_AGENT_GNUS_UA version=2.55 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Replacing GNU grep revisited X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 19:35:29 -0000 Sean Farley writes: > Reasons to consider for switching: > 1. GNU's grep -r option "is broken" according to the following post. That reason alone is enough for me, as I regularly run into this problem when grepping the kernel tree ("recursive directory loop" due to back-pointing symlinks in the compile directories). That GNU grep has no proper control of how it treats symlinks is beyond my understanding. FreeGrep gets it "for free" because it uses libfts, just like everything else in FreeBSD that needs to traverse directory structures. This is another argument in FreeGrep's favor: it's more conistent with other FreeBSD utilities. Unfortunately, FreeGrep has annoying bugs as well. For instance, it tries to grep the directories themselves (rather than just their contents) when recursing, while GNU grep only greps directories if they are explicitly listed on the command line. Furthermore, GNU grep will not by default show the contents of what it considers to be a binary file (such as a directory) while FreeGrep does (causing broken ttys and much gnashing of teeth). DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav - des@des.no