[Bug 223556] apropos(1) should use regular expression by default for a keyword search

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=223556

            Bug ID: 223556
           Summary: apropos(1) should use regular expression by default
                    for a keyword search
           Product: Base System
           Version: CURRENT
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Only Me
          Priority: ---
         Component: bin
          Assignee: freebsd-bugs at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: wosch at FreeBSD.org

apropos does a keyword search. In the past the keyword was a regular expression

On FreeBSD 10 you can run:

# search for 'f.*bar' 
$ apropos 'f.*bar' | wc -l
       4

# or dump the database
apropos '.' | wc -l
    5582


On FreeBSD12-current

$ apropos 'f.*bar' | wc -l
apropos: nothing appropriate
       0

$ apropos '.' | wc -l
     318

To use regular expression, you need to prefix the tilde now:

$ apropos '~f.*bar' | wc -l
       2
apropos '~.' | wc -l
    4488


I do not like this change. We are incompatible with anything before in FreeBSD,
and we are incompatible with the gnu tools on debian/ubuntu/centos.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.