GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, breaks existing scripts

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by freehunter on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:37AM (#4295873)

When I read the first post in the chain, I thought "well, it has to be a bug". Then I read the second post... wow, it was intentional. I've used -r and -R both in the same script to do the same thing, just depending on how I was feeling that day. Now I'm afraid to update.

I don't think distros should be afraid to break compatibility with main if main is making a change that makes no sense. Breaking essential and classic *nix functions defeats the purpose of CLI utilities.

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Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by pif on Thursday July 26, 2012 @12:18PM (#4296783)

> I don't think distros should be afraid to break compatibility with main if main is making a change that makes no sense.

Hi, I don't agree. Different versions of a tool showing different behaviour for the same option is enough for me; the same version of the tool showing different behaviour for the same option _depending on the distribution_ ... I feel that's too much!

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Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by freehunter on Thursday July 26, 2012 @01:23PM (#4297295)

Well, like the link states this already breaks compatibility with BSD grep. Combine that with breaking compatibility with previous version, breaking previous scripts, and breaking based on distro depending on the speed at which the package maintainers upgrade (if ever)... it's best IMO to just leave it the way it always was.

It's going to be hard enough switching between a machine that only gets critical updates and a machine with the same distro but getting all updates. Grep has been around since 1973, is there any serious Unix scripter who feels it still needs more features?

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