On Friday 08 May 2009 16:01:14 Mike Kazantsev wrote: > On Fri, 8 May 2009 14:38:58 +0100 > > Stroller <strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote: > > To find the part to which I refer you'll need to scroll down about > > halfway through that page to "Colorize grep"; the author advises adding: > > > > if echo hello|grep --color=auto l >/dev/null 2>&1; then > > export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto' GREP_COLOR='1;32' > > fi > > > > to ~/.bashrc > > > > Why does he echo hello, please? > > Some greps (like BSD one) might not support '--color' option, so "echo > hello|grep --color=auto l" will return error code, skipping if clause, > and won't break grep operation by adding an unsupported option.
except that STDERR is combined with STDOUT and sent to /dev/null so the script will never get it, the if is always true and the entire check is redundant. Better would be if echo hello|grep --color=auto l >/dev/null ; then -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
