NEWS revision 53574 
199122SobrienVersion 2.3:
2232276Stijl
399122Sobrien  - When searching a binary file FOO, grep now just reports
4232276Stijl    `Binary file FOO matches' instead of outputting binary data.
599122Sobrien    This is typically more useful than the old behavior,
6232276Stijl    and it is also more consistent with other utilities like `diff'.
7    A file is considered to be binary if it contains a NUL (i.e. zero) byte.
8
9    The new -a or --text option causes `grep' to assume that all
10    input is text.  (This option has the same meaning as with `diff'.)
11    Use it if you want binary data in your output.
12
13  - `grep' now searches directories just like ordinary files; it no longer
14    silently skips directories.  This is the traditional behavior of
15    Unix text utilities (in particular, of traditional `grep').
16    Hence `grep PATTERN DIRECTORY' should report
17    `grep: DIRECTORY: Is a directory' on hosts where the operating system
18    does not permit programs to read directories directly, and
19    `grep: DIRECTORY: Binary file matches' (or nothing) otherwise.
20
21    The new -d ACTION or --directories=ACTION option affects directory handling.
22    `-d skip' causes `grep' to silently skip directories, as in grep 2.2;
23    `-d read' (the default) causes `grep' to read directories if possible,
24    as in earlier versions of grep.
25
26  - The MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows ports now behave identically to the
27    GNU and Unix ports with respect to binary files and directories.
28
29Version 2.2:
30
31Bug fix release.
32
33  - Status error number fix.
34  - Skipping directories removed.
35  - Many typos fix.
36  - -f /dev/null fix(not to consider as an empty pattern).
37  - Checks for wctype/wchar.
38  - -E was using the wrong matcher fix.
39  - bug in regex char class fix
40  - Fixes for DJGPP
41
42Version 2.1:
43
44This is a bug fix release(see Changelog) i.e. no new features.
45
46  - More compliance to GNU standard.
47  - Long options.
48  - Internationalisation.
49  - Use automake/autoconf.
50  - Directory hierarchy change.
51  - Sigvec with -e on Linux corrected.
52  - Sigvec with -f on Linux corrected.
53  - Sigvec with the mmap() corrected.
54  - Bug in kwset corrected.
55  - -q, -L and -l stop on first match.
56  - New and improve regex.[ch] from Ulrich Drepper.
57  - New and improve dfa.[ch] from Arnold Robbins.
58  - Prototypes for over zealous C compiler.
59  - Not scanning a file, if it's a directory
60    (cause problems on Sun).
61  - Ported to MS-DOS/MS-Windows with DJGPP tools.
62
63See Changelog for the full story and proper credits.
64
65Version 2.0:
66
67The most important user visible change is that egrep and fgrep have
68disappeared as separate programs into the single grep program mandated
69by POSIX 1003.2.  New options -G, -E, and -F have been added,
70selecting grep, egrep, and fgrep behavior respectively.  For
71compatibility with historical practice, hard links named egrep and
72fgrep are also provided.  See the manual page for details.
73
74In addition, the regular expression facilities described in Posix
75draft 11.2 are now supported, except for internationalization features
76related to locale-dependent collating sequence information.
77
78There is a new option, -L, which is like -l except it lists
79files which don't contain matches.  The reason this option was
80added is because '-l -v' doesn't do what you expect.
81
82Performance has been improved; the amount of improvement is platform
83dependent, but (for example) grep 2.0 typically runs at least 30% faster
84than grep 1.6 on a DECstation using the MIPS compiler.  Where possible,
85grep now uses mmap() for file input; on a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1 this
86may cut system time by as much as half, for a total reduction in running
87time by nearly 50%.  On machines that don't use mmap(), the buffering
88code has been rewritten to choose more favorable alignments and buffer
89sizes for read().
90
91Portability has been substantially cleaned up, and an automatic
92configure script is now provided.
93
94The internals have changed in ways too numerous to mention.
95People brave enough to reuse the DFA matcher in other programs
96will now have their bravery amply "rewarded", for the interface
97to that file has been completely changed.  Some changes were
98necessary to track the evolution of the regex package, and since
99I was changing it anyway I decided to do a general cleanup.
100