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

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by 0x0 on Thursday July 26, 2012 @09:40AM (#4295886)

Yeah, this sounds really misguided. If they change/add functionality, why not move that to a new option? Those who want the new way can use the new feature, and scripts won't act differently depending on which version is installed.

New features should get new options; they should not move old features to new flags and put the new features on the old flags. Nuts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by rmc on Thursday July 26, 2012 @10:10AM (#4296027)

Increasing the number of options and switches has downsides, it makes the software more complex to use.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by 0x0 on Thursday July 26, 2012 @10:28AM (#4296101)

Hehe, you know what makes the software more complex to use? Having to grep in the output of "grep --version" before deciding which switch to pass to grep.. :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by michaelhoffman on Thursday July 26, 2012 @10:35AM (#4296128)

You don't need to do that, just always use -R :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by nitrogen on Thursday July 26, 2012 @05:02PM (#4298712)

We'll get right on inventing that time machine so everyone can go back in time to the introduction of the -r flag and warn themselves ;).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, brea... by rbanffy on Thursday July 26, 2012 @05:26PM (#4298830)

And note that it will make your code more compatible with other, POSIX-compliant, versions of grep.

[ Parent | on HN ]