On Mon, 22 May 2006, Paul Eggert wrote: > There are many, many places where the grep manual does not document > accidental features of grep. This is not necessarily a mistake, any > more that it is a mistake that the C standard intentionally does not > specify the exact value of the maximum 'int' value, or the exact order > of evaluation of an expression.
The comparison is unfair since it is clearly specified somewhere (e.g., all C books that I read) that the size of int is implementation/platform specific. Also, interested users have a way of finding the size of int and maximum value (e.g., by looking at limits.h). There is a big mess in the grep code. Some things work, some don't, and for some we're not even sure how they should behave. I am with you that the *mess*, or what you call accidental features, should not be documented. But once we decide on a specific behaviour for grep, and it makes its way to the source, and we're fairly convinced that it works, then it should also be in the docs. Also, known bugs, experimental features, and *undefined behaviours* should be included. Once there is consensus that these docs should be here, I am confident that many on the list will contribute. Maybe we don't really disagree, just emphasize different aspects of the same thing. Cheers, TAA ----------------------------------------------------- Tony Abou-Assaleh Lecturer, Computer Science Department Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada, L2S 3A1 Office: MC J215 Tel: +1(905)688-5550 ext. 5243 Fax: +1(905)688-3255 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.cosc.brocku.ca/~taa/ ----------------------[THE END]----------------------
