[sr #107100] grep --word-regexp doesn't work (in only one case)

[John Graham]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?107100>

                 Summary: grep --word-regexp doesn't work (in only one case)
                 Project: grep
            Submitted by: johngraham
            Submitted on: Sun 01 Nov 2009 22:53:12 GMT
                Category: None
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
        Operating System: GNU/Linux

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Details:

On my Ubuntu 9.10 system, the --word-regexp option outputs words that match,
but aren't complete words, under certain (weird) circumstances. For example, a
cut & paste from a terminal session:


address@hidden ~]$ cat > greptest << 'EOF'
> aa
> aaa
> aaabbb
> EOF
address@hidden ~]$ grep -w aa greptest 
aa
aaabbb
address@hidden ~]$


I'd expect the output of the last command to be just 'aa', and not have
'aaabbb' there as well.

This is quite sensitive to what you put in - from the small amount of playing
around with it I've done, any letter will work so long as it replaces all the
a's above, and you get this result if the b's in the grepped file are any
letters, so long as the first isn't also an 'a' (or whatever you changed all
those a's to).

Just in case it helps, the output of 'grep --version' is:


GNU grep 2.5.4

Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.


I'd be more than happy to provide any other info that can help with
finding/classifying this.

John G




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