#2806 grep don't support -E on Solaris

Ethan Merritt — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 17:57:48 -0000

egrep has been deprecated in linux in favor of "grep -E". Depending on the distro (I guess) you get either a warning or an error if egrep is invoked.

On the other hand, for these two instances I don't think the "-E" is needed anyhow. Will your Solaris system accept "grep" here instead of "egrep"?

grep don't support -E on Solaris

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 14:13:51 -0000

Hello,

during the build of gnuplot on Solaris I have found two errors without known consequences on deliverables.

for e in `grep -E "^[   ]*START_HELP" ja/term/ai.trm ja/term/aquaterm.trm ja/term/be.trm ja/term/block.trm ja/
term/caca.trm ja/term/cairo.trm ja/term/canvas.trm ja/term/cgm.trm ja/term/context.trm ja/term/debug.trm ja/term/djsvga.trm ja/term/dumb.trm ja/term/dxf.trm ja/term/emf.trm ja/term/epson.trm ja/term/estimate.trm ja/term/
fig.trm ja/term/gd.trm ja/term/gpic.trm ja/term/grass.trm ja/term/hpgeneric.h ja/term/hpgl.trm ja/term/imagen.
trm ja/term/linux-vgagl.trm ja/term/latex_old.h ja/term/lua.trm ja/term/pbm.trm ja/term/pict2e.trm ja/term/pm.
trm ja/term/post.trm ja/term/pslatex.trm ja/term/pstricks.trm ja/term/qt.trm ja/term/regis.trm ja/term/svg.trm
 ja/term/t410x.trm ja/term/tek.trm ja/term/texdraw.trm ja/term/tgif.trm ja/term/tkcanvas.trm ja/term/webp.trm ja/term/win.trm ja/term/wxt.trm ja/term/x11.trm ja/term/xlib.trm |\                                           
     LC_ALL=C sort -f -t':' -k2` ; do \                                                                       
  f=`echo $e |cut -d\: -f1` ; s=`echo $e | cut -d\: -f2` ;\                                                   
  LC_ALL=C sed -n "/^[  ]*$s/,/^[       ]*END_HELP/p" $f ; \                                                  
done >allterm.tmp                                                                                             grep: illegal option -- E                                                                                     
Usage: grep [-c|-l|-q] -bhinsvw pattern file . . .

Following patch resolves both of them:

--- gnuplot-6.0.3/docs/Makefile.am
+++ gnuplot-6.0.3/docs/Makefile.am
@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@
 endif

 allterm.h: $(CORETERM) $(LUA_HELP)
-       $(AM_V_GEN) for e in `grep -E "^[       ]*START_HELP" $(CORETERM) |\
+       $(AM_V_GEN) for e in `egrep "^[         ]*START_HELP" $(CORETERM) |\
             LC_ALL=C sort -f -t':' -k2` ; do \
          f=`echo $$e |cut -d\: -f1` ; s=`echo $$e | cut -d\: -f2` ;\
          sed -n "/^[   ]*$$s/,/^[      ]*END_HELP/p" $$f ; \
@@ -243,7 +243,7 @@
        cp $(top_srcdir)/docs/term-ja.diff ja
        cp -r $(top_srcdir)/term $(TJ)
        -( cd ja ; patch -p0 < term-ja.diff )
-       $(AM_V_GEN) for e in `grep -E "^[       ]*START_HELP" $(JATERM) |\
+       $(AM_V_GEN) for e in `egrep "^[         ]*START_HELP" $(JATERM) |\
             LC_ALL=C sort -f -t':' -k2` ; do \
          f=`echo $$e |cut -d\: -f1` ; s=`echo $$e | cut -d\: -f2` ;\
          LC_ALL=C sed -n "/^[  ]*$$s/,/^[      ]*END_HELP/p" $$f ; \

Please consider merging it.

Thank you,
Martin

Recent changes to 2806: grep don't support -E on Solaris

#2806 grep don't support -E on Solaris

grep don't support -E on Solaris