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Bug#253621: marked as done ([ef]grep check)

Your message dated Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:38:17 -0800
with message-id <87r63axxs6.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
and subject line Re: Bug#253621: [ef]grep check
has caused the Debian Bug report #253621,
regarding [ef]grep check
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
253621: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=253621
Debian Bug Tracking System
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--- Begin Message --- 
Package: lintian
Version: 1.23.0

lintian should check for use of fgrep or egrep in scripts and suggest
the use "grep -F" or "grep -E" instead.

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl> writes:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 09:43:11PM -0400, Clint Adams wrote:

>>> What is the rationale behind this? Could you please explain that
>>> further?

>> Since nowadays egrep and fgrep are just shell scripts that run 'grep
>> -E' or 'grep -F', running grep directly is always faster.

>> Furthermore, I believe that some people are working on POSIXifying base
>> for some embedded applications; grep -[EF] are mandated by POSIX,
>> [ef]grep are not.

>> This is not a major issue, but the only downside of adding it to
>> lintian would be potentially annoying people.

> Which is not the intention, lintian's goal is to warn people about
> often-made mistakes that potentially hurt... Since Debian supports
> egrep/fgrep, well... When we have more fine-grained severities, maybe a
> waring in the lowest severity. Using perl and not /bin/sh in postinst
> also is bad for performance, but we don't warn for that either.

This really feels like a coding style issue to me, not even the sort of
thing Lintian could usefully be pedantic about.  egrep and fgrep are
provided by an essential package and are unlikely to ever go away, even in
embedded systems IMO, and they're now hard links so the minor performance
issue doesn't apply.  POSIX notes that egrep and fgrep are likely to
continue to be supported for quite some time.

I'm therefore going ahead and closing this bug.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

--- End Message ---
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