Setup 2.249.2.5, Package 'grep' 2.5-1, missing 'egrep.exe' and 'fgrep.exe'

[Randall R Schulz]

Ken,

At 12:05 2003-02-02, G. Ken Holman wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I used to use one of the Cygwin B packages where the egrep.exe utility 
>was included.

"B" as in beta? b17, b18... One of those? Ancient history and truly the 
good old days of Cygnus / Cygwin.


>I'm on an XP system and I downloaded replacement packages yesterday 
>and ensured that I included the "grep" package.
>
>I went to use "egrep.exe" and found it wasn't installed.  I did find 
>an egrep.1 but it just points to grep.

That's a common technique in Unix programming. Because by universal 
convention the name of the program _as it was invoked_ is passed as 
argument 0, a single binary can have "multiple personalities." This can 
be accomplished by either symbolic or hard links. Grep is one such 
multifaceted program. When invoked as "egrep" it behaves like egrep.


>I reviewed my installation and found "Keep" for grep package 2.5-1 
>(indicating to me the package has been installed), and see egrep 
>listed in the package description.  I also see fgrep listed, though 
>I'm not interested in using it.
>
>Neither egrep.exe nor fgrep.exe exist in my bin/ directory, as I would 
>have expected.  Did this fall through the cracks?

Look for the symlinks "fgrep -> grep" and "egrep -> grep". Symlinks 
don't include the ".exe" suffix even if they're pointing to a ".exe" 
file. The same goes for the symlink target name, too.


>In the short term I can copy grep.exe to egrep.exe because my existing 
>batch files rely on it by name, so I just thought I'd report this in 
>case either:
>
>  (1) the files get added or
>
>  (2) the package description removes references to the files not included.

I don't believe anything needs to be fixed in the package. Perhaps for 
some reason your system lost the symlinks that supply fgrep and egrep?


>I hope this helps.
>
>................... Ken
>
>p.s. http://cygwin.com/bugs.html points to 
>http://cygwin.com/lists.html and says where *not* to send bugs, but 
>not where bugs should be sent for problems like this ... I would have 
>thought that would be a FAQ: "which bugs (by example) go to which mail lists?"


Randall Schulz 


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