GREP -- Find Regular Expressions in Files
Revision History

Copyright © 1986-2001 by Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems

GREP is a filter that searches input files, or the standard input, for lines that contain matches for one or more patterns called regular expressions and displays those matching lines. GREP can also search binary files and display records or buffers that contain matches.

This document is the complete revision history, starting with the most recent changes. To use GREP, please see the user guide and the reference manual.

Release 6.9, 22 Dec 2001

Note: This is a pre-release of 7.0. Registered users are being polled for desired features, and their responses will help determine any additional changes for 7.0. If you would like to participate in the poll, send e-mail to the author.

Program changes:

Documentation changes (in addition to those driven by the above program changes):

Release 6.0, 8 Sep 2001

Note: There were beta test releases numbered 5.95, 5.97, and 5.98. For users who participated in the beta test, a number in parentheses indicates the release where a particular change was made.

(5.95) The big news is the addition of extended regular expressions. GREP can now handle constructs like alternatives |, optionals ?, general quantifiers {...}, subexpressions (...), and more. With extended regexes, you can choose whether GREP reports matching lines as usual, or just the portion of each line that matches the extended regex.

Other program changes with this release:

User guide changes:

Release 5.33, 19 Aug 2001

This is a repackaging for Simtel; there are no significant functional changes.

Release 5.32, 20 May 2001

If you specified current directory on another disk, such as "d:*.htm", GREP was taking that as root directory, "d:\*.htm". Apparently no one but the program author ever does such a thing!

Release 5.31, 18 April 2001

Unfortunately, a bug was introduced in release 5.3: under certain circumstances, GREP got confused about whether it was working from standard input or input files. This release corrects that bug, with my apologies to everyone who downloaded the buggy 5.3.

Release 5.3, 17 April 2001

New features:

Other changes:

Release 5.2, 4 Jan 2001

Release 5.1, 31 May 2000

Release 5.0, 7 May 2000

Changes to the program: Changes to the user guide:

Release 4.5, 25 Sep 1999 (general release):
v4.4, 18 Sep 1999 (limited release):

Release 4.3, 4 Aug 1999

Release 4.2, 20 Feb 1999

Release 4.1, 22 Jan 1999

Release 4.0, 19 Nov 1998

Release 4.0, May 1998

Release 3.4, March 1998

Release 3.3, Feb 1998

Release 3.2, June 1997

Release 3.1, Jan 1997

Release 3.0, Dec 1996

Release 2.4, April 1990

Release 2.3, March 1990

Release 2.2, Jan 1990

Release 2.1, Dec 1989

Release 2.0, July 1989

Release 1.0, April 1986