-- Paul Eggert <egg...@cs.ucla.edu> [2013-09-29 16:53:21 -0700]: > Glenn Golden wrote: > > Per the final sentence of 9.5.3, "conforming applications cannot use > > [constructs like '*xyz']" > > This is making the incorrect assumption that 'grep' internally must be > implemented as a strictly conforming POSIX application. >
Disagree strongly that any such assumption is being made. The reasoning step that you excerpt from above is strictly deductive; no assumptions of any kind are present. > > POSIX does not require that, > Agree. > > and the rest of your conclusions therefore do not follow. > Permit me to disagree and to substantiate that disagreement in detail, but at a later time. I will not be able to respond further for a few days. > > Eric explained the intent of POSIXLY_CORRECT pretty well. Occasionally > people ask for a different feature, where a GNU application diagnoses the > use of any extension to POSIX. The need for such a feature is less, though, > and the hassle is greater, and so it's typically not worth the aggravation. > I completely understand, and am sympathetic with the need to realistically assess cost/benefit on any code change. It's always easy for users to suggest something that sounds "so simple", but can wind up as a great deal of work to implement behind the scenes, open unintended cans of worms, etc. Been there, done that many times, and I fully sympathize. Let me add tangentially that I think you guys (and all the gnu maintainers) do a superb job and I respect your time and effort. I realize I'm being a bit of a gadfly on this particular issue, but as I said, I think something constructive can come from exploring it carefully in a bit of detail. I would hope when the discussion ends you will be able to say, "boy, that guy was a verbose pain in the ass but he was being civil and raised some good points that were beneficial to have in the ML." Actually I hope for more, that some clarifying language changes can wind up being made in the POSIXLY_CORRECT description, but let's save specifics on that for later in the discussion. > > As this does not seem to be a bug in grep I'm going to take the liberty > of marking it 'done'. > OK. Do you object to continuing the discussion on the thread, even though the ticket is closed? Or is there a more appropriate venue?
