From owner-freebsd-bugs  Tue Mar  5  5:10:16 2002
Delivered-To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org
Received: from mailman.zeta.org.au (mailman.zeta.org.au [203.26.10.16])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14D3137B416
	for <freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG>; Tue,  5 Mar 2002 05:10:11 -0800 (PST)
Received: from bde.zeta.org.au (bde.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.102])
	by mailman.zeta.org.au (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA27154;
	Wed, 6 Mar 2002 00:10:01 +1100
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 00:10:51 +1100 (EST)
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
X-X-Sender:  <bde@gamplex.bde.org>
To: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>
Cc: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>, <freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: bin/35505: [PATCH] Feature enhancement for sed(1)
In-Reply-To: <20020305030435.F3880@over-yonder.net>
Message-ID: <20020306000043.H4867-100000@gamplex.bde.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
List-ID: <freebsd-bugs.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-bugs>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-bugs>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Matthew D. Fuller wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 01:24:19AM +1100 I heard the voice of
> Bruce Evans, and lo! it spake thus:
> >
> > The functionality is already provided in a better way by the -E flag.
> > I agree with the gnu standard which says:
> >
> > ! Please don't make the behavior of a utility depend on the name used to
> > ! invoke it.  It is useful sometimes to make a link to a utility with a
> > ! different name, and that should not change what it does.
>
> I find that especially humerous, given that GNU {e,f,z}grep was what
> inspired me to write the patch in the first place...

GNU had to keep [ef]grep for historical reasons.  GNU zgrep has to have
a different name because it is a different utility (at least in the old
version of it in FreeBSD) -- it is an (unused in FreeBSD) shell script in
the gzip distribution.  zgrep as part of grep is a FreeBSD hack, at least
in the version in FreeBSD.  Even if it were part of GNU egrep, it would
have to have a link named zgrep for backwards compatibility.

Bruce


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message