grep manual page miswording

utzoo!henry utzoo!henry
Thu Dec 16 16:27:30 AEST 1982


The grep(1) manual page is misleadingly worded when one considers
the effects of -v.  Things like the description of the exit status
are phrased in terms of when lines "match";  the -v option actually
inverts the meaning of this completely, but its description does
not say so.  For example, in the presence of -v, exit status is
0 if at least one line did *not* match the pattern.  This behavior
is clearly correct, and the manual page should be fixed to describe
it accurately.  The simplest thing to do is to reword the description
of -v to something like this:

	Invert the sense of matching;  ``match'' all lines which
	do \fInot\fR match the pattern.



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