Re: Bug#454690: "grep -v" alway returns 0

[Reuben Thomas]

On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Wacek Kusnierczyk wrote:

> Eduard Bloch wrote:
> > > > I want to receive filtered output _and_ receive a return code which
> > > > tells me whether anything has been filtered in the pipe or not.
> > > if you learn to ask for help, you're more likely to get a nice solution.
> >
> > I didn't ask your for help, how often shall this be repeated?. I don't
> > even care about the outcome, I don't maintain the problematic package
> > anymore and I closed even this bug report. EOD.
>
> blah blah blah.  you can't read your own statements, how could a sane
> person suggest to help you?  i certainly did not, i don't really care
> about the probelms you apparently have.

Wacek, I think you're confused: Eduard, who is a Debain maintainer (but not 
of grep) was dealing with a bug report in the Debian bug tracking system, 
which had originally been reported against a different package, which he 
does maintain. The thread was later Cced to address@hidden by Aníbal 
Monsalve Salazar, the Debian maintainer of grep, because he thought there 
was a bug in grep. Eduard was pointing out that there was no bug, but that 
a) the documentation made it difficult to understand the behaviour of grep 
in this case and b) the return code of grep -v is arguably not very useful.

The original reporter of the problem was yet another person (Nick [only 
one name visible in the bug report]).

This shows a problem with CCing a reply to an already existing thread to 
another list: it can confuse readers there (in this case, Wacek), who don't 
understand the full context of the conversation; and writers, who may not
realise everything they say is being copied to an entirely different 
context.

--
http://rrt.sc3d.org/ | partisan, n.  an adherent without sense (Bierce)