Linda Walsh wrote: > Isn't it usually the case with conflicting options that the last > one gets taken as the choice
Not really. Often, conflicting options are reported as conflicts. For example, "join -e1 -e2" reports "conflicting empty-field replacement strings". Whether conflicting options should be reported as conflicts, or later should override earlier, is more of a pragmatic decision. We shouldn't encourage people putting -P or -E in GREP_OPTIONS; that would break too many uses. So I don't see the value for having later options override earlier ones here. It seems more useful to report an error.
