On 2024-03-24 23:47, Gary Johnson wrote:
grep is small enough in concept that it shouldn't require the user to read anything outside of the man page.
Maybe grep's concept is simple, but the program itself is not that simple. For example, the grep man page doesn't document all the ins and outs of PCREs. (Not even the manual does that!)
The GNU Coding Standards are pretty clear that man pages are secondary.[1] To some extent the GNU grep man page is already too long and detailed. FreeBSD's grep man page[2] is a better length (and amusingly, it also doesn't mention the minor detail of files ending in non-newline).
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Man-Pages.html [2]: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=grep
