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- Version 2.3:
-
- - When searching a binary file FOO, grep now just reports
- `Binary file FOO matches' instead of outputting binary data.
- This is typically more useful than the old behavior,
- and it is also more consistent with other utilities like `diff'.
- A file is considered to be binary if it contains a NUL (i.e. zero) byte.
-
- The new -a or --text option causes `grep' to assume that all
- input is text. (This option has the same meaning as with `diff'.)
- Use it if you want binary data in your output.
-
- - `grep' now searches directories just like ordinary files; it no longer
- silently skips directories. This is the traditional behavior of
- Unix text utilities (in particular, of traditional `grep').
- Hence `grep PATTERN DIRECTORY' should report
- `grep: DIRECTORY: Is a directory' on hosts where the operating system
- does not permit programs to read directories directly, and
- `grep: DIRECTORY: Binary file matches' (or nothing) otherwise.
-
- The new -d ACTION or --directories=ACTION option affects directory handling.
- `-d skip' causes `grep' to silently skip directories, as in grep 2.2;
- `-d read' (the default) causes `grep' to read directories if possible,
- as in earlier versions of grep.
-
- - The MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows ports now behave identically to the
- GNU and Unix ports with respect to binary files and directories.
-
- Version 2.2:
-
- Bug fix release.
-
- - Status error number fix.
- - Skipping directories removed.
- - Many typos fix.
- - -f /dev/null fix(not to consider as an empty pattern).
- - Checks for wctype/wchar.
- - -E was using the wrong matcher fix.
- - bug in regex char class fix
- - Fixes for DJGPP
-
- Version 2.1:
-
- This is a bug fix release(see Changelog) i.e. no new features.
-
- - More compliance to GNU standard.
- - Long options.
- - Internationalisation.
- - Use automake/autoconf.
- - Directory hierarchy change.
- - Sigvec with -e on Linux corrected.
- - Sigvec with -f on Linux corrected.
- - Sigvec with the mmap() corrected.
- - Bug in kwset corrected.
- - -q, -L and -l stop on first match.
- - New and improve regex.[ch] from Ulrich Drepper.
- - New and improve dfa.[ch] from Arnold Robbins.
- - Prototypes for over zealous C compiler.
- - Not scanning a file, if it's a directory
- (cause problems on Sun).
- - Ported to MS-DOS/MS-Windows with DJGPP tools.
-
- See Changelog for the full story and proper credits.
-
- Version 2.0:
-
- The most important user visible change is that egrep and fgrep have
- disappeared as separate programs into the single grep program mandated
- by POSIX 1003.2. New options -G, -E, and -F have been added,
- selecting grep, egrep, and fgrep behavior respectively. For
- compatibility with historical practice, hard links named egrep and
- fgrep are also provided. See the manual page for details.
-
- In addition, the regular expression facilities described in Posix
- draft 11.2 are now supported, except for internationalization features
- related to locale-dependent collating sequence information.
-
- There is a new option, -L, which is like -l except it lists
- files which don't contain matches. The reason this option was
- added is because '-l -v' doesn't do what you expect.
-
- Performance has been improved; the amount of improvement is platform
- dependent, but (for example) grep 2.0 typically runs at least 30% faster
- than grep 1.6 on a DECstation using the MIPS compiler. Where possible,
- grep now uses mmap() for file input; on a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1 this
- may cut system time by as much as half, for a total reduction in running
- time by nearly 50%. On machines that don't use mmap(), the buffering
- code has been rewritten to choose more favorable alignments and buffer
- sizes for read().
-
- Portability has been substantially cleaned up, and an automatic
- configure script is now provided.
-
- The internals have changed in ways too numerous to mention.
- People brave enough to reuse the DFA matcher in other programs
- will now have their bravery amply "rewarded", for the interface
- to that file has been completely changed. Some changes were
- necessary to track the evolution of the regex package, and since
- I was changing it anyway I decided to do a general cleanup.
-