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Re: Setup 2.249.2.5, Package 'grep' 2.5-1, missing 'egrep.exe' and 'fgrep.exe'


Ken,

At 12:05 2003-02-02, G. Ken Holman wrote:
Hi folks,

I used to use one of the Cygwin B packages where the egrep.exe utility was included.
"B" as in beta? b17, b18... One of those? Ancient history and truly the good old days of Cygnus / Cygwin.


I'm on an XP system and I downloaded replacement packages yesterday and ensured that I included the "grep" package.

I went to use "egrep.exe" and found it wasn't installed. I did find an egrep.1 but it just points to grep.
That's a common technique in Unix programming. Because by universal convention the name of the program _as it was invoked_ is passed as argument 0, a single binary can have "multiple personalities." This can be accomplished by either symbolic or hard links. Grep is one such multifaceted program. When invoked as "egrep" it behaves like egrep.


I reviewed my installation and found "Keep" for grep package 2.5-1 (indicating to me the package has been installed), and see egrep listed in the package description. I also see fgrep listed, though I'm not interested in using it.

Neither egrep.exe nor fgrep.exe exist in my bin/ directory, as I would have expected. Did this fall through the cracks?
Look for the symlinks "fgrep -> grep" and "egrep -> grep". Symlinks don't include the ".exe" suffix even if they're pointing to a ".exe" file. The same goes for the symlink target name, too.


In the short term I can copy grep.exe to egrep.exe because my existing batch files rely on it by name, so I just thought I'd report this in case either:

(1) the files get added or

(2) the package description removes references to the files not included.
I don't believe anything needs to be fixed in the package. Perhaps for some reason your system lost the symlinks that supply fgrep and egrep?


I hope this helps.

................... Ken

p.s. http://cygwin.com/bugs.html points to http://cygwin.com/lists.html and says where *not* to send bugs, but not where bugs should be sent for problems like this ... I would have thought that would be a FAQ: "which bugs (by example) go to which mail lists?"

Randall Schulz

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