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

[Jamie Landeg-Jones]

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 ;-)