Subject: Re: [PATCH 19/22] t/t8*: merge "grep | sed" pipelines

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2024 13:47:12 -0800

Beat Bolli <[email-masked]> writes:

> On 06.03.24 03:17, Todd Zullinger wrote:
>> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>> Isn't -E a GNUism?
>>>
>>> At least,
>>>
>>>      https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sed.html
>>>
>>> does not seem to have it (we may need to fix t6030 to rid its only
>>> existing use).
>> I _thought_ that -r was the GNUism.  The GNU sed-4.8 manpage
>> says:
>>      -E, -r, --regexp-extended
>>          use extended regular expressions in the script
>>          (for portability use POSIX -E).
>> That doesn't mean the man page is right, of course. :)
>> https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=528 suggests
>> that -E has been adopted and, importanly, is more widely
> ...
> At least macOS Ventura and later supports "sed -E". I can't say what
> the more exotic platforms (NonStop?) have.

More exotic platforms may lag behind, and it is a very valid
concern.  Also, the bug #528 does talk about -E being accepted, but
wasn't it accepted for Issue 8, which is not finalized yet, no?

So it seems it may be prudent to stick to BRE if we were to squash
these pipelines into a single sed invocation, at least for a few
years.

Thanks.