Freebsd 11 - /usr/bin missing [xl]zgrep/zegrep/zfgrep

[Freddie Cash]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 5:41 AM, Jamie Landeg-Jones <jamie at dyslexicfish.net>
wrote:

> Kyle Evans <kevans91 at ksu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Ah, I see what you mean. I've no idea on the history here, but I
> > believe the idea is that if I invoke one of these other links (zgrep,
> > egrep, ...) I'm expecting it to be actually be grep(1) based purely on
> > the name, and I don't consider bsdgrep(1) to be installed for anything
> > but a courtesy.
> >
> > For grep(1) to be GNU grep while xzgrep to secretly be a link to BSD
> > grep would be quite surprising to me as a user/admin, especially since
> > there are very real output and argument differences between the two.
> > This argument can be furthered by imagining the awkwardness that would
> > come from a system where the fairly standard *grep links are a mix
> > between BSD grep and GNU grep.
>
> Ahhh. Yes, that does make good sense, now you mention it.
>
> Maybe they should be installed as bsdxzgrep ... :-)
>
> The thing is, though, it *did* used to do this, and now it doesn't,
> which isn't very POLA, and the revision log makes no mention of it
> (it's an update to do with META mode) and I can't find any information
> about it. I'd have least expected /usr/src/UPDATING to mention when
> 6 utilities are effectively removed from /usr/bin!
>
> Hence why I was wondering if this change was actually intentional - at
> least now I know a good reason to do this (what you mentioned above) so
> cheers for that, and the fast responses..
>
> Your first response came in so quickly, I first thought it was a bounce
> message!
>
> Cheers, Jamie
>
> P.S. Nice to see someone on this list still remembers mail quoting
> etiquette ;-)
>

​Huh, never even noticed (not that I use many of the grep variants).  But,
on a 10.3 install (from binaries, not source), half the variants are
hard-links to bsdgrep, while the other half are hard-links to grep:

​[fcash at romulus  ~]$ ls -li /usr/bin/*grep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/bsdgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/bzegrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/bzfgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/bzgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/egrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/fgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/grep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/lzegrep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/lzfgrep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/lzgrep
5704673 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     10 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/pgrep ->
/bin/pgrep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/xzegrep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/xzfgrep
5704478 -r-xr-xr-x  7 root  wheel  49224 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/xzgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/zegrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/zfgrep
5704508 -r-xr-xr-x  9 root  wheel  93400 Mar 24  2016 /usr/bin/zgrep

​Does this mean an upgrade via freebsd-update to 11.x would remove all the
lz* and xz* hard-links from my system?​  Not that I would notice, just
curious.

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com