freebsd stable - Mar 2017 - Freebsd 11 - /usr/bin missing [xl]zgrep/zegrep/zfgrep

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 10:54 PM, Jamie Landeg-Jones
> I realise there are advantages of GNUgrep and also advantages of BSDgrep,
> hence why they are currently both available (and thanks for your work on
> getting bsd grep up to parity) but I don't understand why on the
default install,
> xzgrep.. etc. are no longer linked to bsdgrep, unless there are problems
> with them? (I notice the 32K limit bug has been fixed) - but then if there
> were problems, they wouldn;t be linked whatever the configured system
"grep"
Ah, I see what you mean. I've no idea on the history here, but I
believe the idea is that if I invoke one of these other links (zgrep,
egrep, ...) I'm expecting it to be actually be grep(1) based purely on
the name, and I don't consider bsdgrep(1) to be installed for anything
but a courtesy.

For grep(1) to be GNU grep while xzgrep to secretly be a link to BSD
grep would be quite surprising to me as a user/admin, especially since
there are very real output and argument differences between the two.
This argument can be furthered by imagining the awkwardness that would
come from a system where the fairly standard *grep links are a mix
between BSD grep and GNU grep.
> Hope this makes sense, I should have been asleep hours ago!
>
> Cheers, Jamie
Makes good sense, =)

Thanks,

Kyle Evans

Kyle Evans <kevans91 at ksu.edu> wrote:
> Ah, I see what you mean. I've no idea on the history here, but I
> believe the idea is that if I invoke one of these other links (zgrep,
> egrep, ...) I'm expecting it to be actually be grep(1) based purely on
> the name, and I don't consider bsdgrep(1) to be installed for anything
> but a courtesy.
>
> For grep(1) to be GNU grep while xzgrep to secretly be a link to BSD
> grep would be quite surprising to me as a user/admin, especially since
> there are very real output and argument differences between the two.
> This argument can be furthered by imagining the awkwardness that would
> come from a system where the fairly standard *grep links are a mix
> between BSD grep and GNU grep.
Ahhh. Yes, that does make good sense, now you mention it.

Maybe they should be installed as bsdxzgrep ... :-)

The thing is, though, it *did* used to do this, and now it doesn't,
which isn't very POLA, and the revision log makes no mention of it
(it's an update to do with META mode) and I can't find any information
about it. I'd have least expected /usr/src/UPDATING to mention when
6 utilities are effectively removed from /usr/bin!

Hence why I was wondering if this change was actually intentional - at
least now I know a good reason to do this (what you mentioned above) so
cheers for that, and the fast responses..

Your first response came in so quickly, I first thought it was a bounce
message!

Cheers, Jamie

P.S. Nice to see someone on this list still remembers mail quoting etiquette ;-)

On 03/22/17 00:07, Kyle Evans wrote:
> [...]
> For grep(1) to be GNU grep while xzgrep to secretly be a link to BSD
> grep would be quite surprising to me as a user/admin, especially since
> there are very real output and argument differences between the two.
> [...]
It would not surprise me.  Knowing, to begin with, that GNU grep does
not support uncompressing its input, I would *never* expect bzgrep
(etc.) to link to GNU grep.                                -- George


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