bug with grep 3.0.2 in cygwin 3.0.7

[Brian Inglis]

On 2019-08-29 19:42, Eliot Moss wrote:
> On 8/29/2019 3:08 PM, Andrey Repin wrote:
>>> I encounter some problem with grep option -E on cygwin 3.0.7
>>> echo "a^b" | grep "a^b" #answer a^b ie it's OK
>>> but
>>> echo "a^b" | grep -E "a^b" #answer nothing " for me it's KO
>> That's an expected result of an impossible constraint.
>>> I have to backslash ^ to be OK like : grep -E 'a\^b'
>> Yes.
>>> Is-it a bug ?
>> No.
>>> I don't know if all versions of cygwin and grep are concerned.
>> RTFM, this is regexp basics.
> There was a really great answer to this earlier.  I tried an
> answer, but was wrong.  One has to read the "fine print" really
> carefully.  At first I thought it was a bug, at least in the
> documentation, but the meaning of a^b, when ^ is the metacharacter,
> is kind of subtle (IMO at least).  It's easy to miss that
> subtlety and think that if ^ is not at the beginning of an
> expression it will be treated as an ordinary character ...
> But my main point is that RTM would be enough; RTFM seemed
> to me perhaps a little more rude than necessary.

https://cygwin.com/acronyms/#RTFM exists and has been amusing rather than rude
in our industry for decades, especially in non-native English locales e.g. here
in this list: "Read The Fine Manual"; but RTM for software products is usually
"Release To Manufacturing", from the days when media was produced!

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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