Follow-up Comment #12, bug #66481 (group groff):
One observes that only grep(1) doesn't feature-gate its use of `\w|foo|`
behind a test of the `.g` register (groff-compatible formatter) for
falsity. It is therefore the only one of these three that would have
provoked a warning. (What the foregoing do is reimplement the `lq` and
`rq` quotation strings, an extension from 4BSD (1980)--my guess is to
compensate for System V-based troffs missing them).
Specifically, System V _troff_'s _man_ package **prior** to SVR4 (~1989)
lacked these string definitions.
Compare System V (retronymically "SVR1") for the PDP-11:
https://github.com/ryanwoodsmall/oldsysv/blob/master/sysv-pdp11_usr/lib/macros/an
...to SVR4.
https://github.com/ryanwoodsmall/oldsysv/blob/master/sysvr4/svr4/ucbcmd/troff/troff.d/tmac.d/an
The code at issue in GNU _grep_, _rcs_, and _awk_ would also have worked
around missing definitions of the `lq` and `rq` in Plan 9 _troff_'s _man_
package. plan9port a.k.a. Plan 9 from User Space
[https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/pull/735 accepted a patch from me on 10
October 2025 to add these string definitions to their _man_(7)], making these
strings in _man_(7) documents universally portable to my knowledge.
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