On 2015-12-11 13:37:46 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote: > The change in grep 2.22 is due to an earlier bug report: > > http://bugs.gnu.org/21027
This one was about --exclude-dir, whose description in grep 2.21 is very unclear and it was already broken anyway: zira:~> grep -rl e --exclude-dir='usr*' /usr/include zira:~> grep -rl e --exclude-dir='usr*' /usr/include/stdio.h /usr/include/stdio.h But for --exclude, the description is clear: --exclude=GLOB Skip files whose base name matches GLOB (using wildcard ^^^^^^^^^ matching). A file-name glob can use *, ?, and [...] as wildcards, and \ to quote a wildcard or backslash character literally. "base name" means base name, not the full path! I suggest that you revert the behavior for --exclude so that existing scripts are not broken, and possibly add --exclude-path to match the full path. Now, --exclude was already broken: $ grep -l . /usr/share/doc/grep/* /usr/share/doc/grep/AUTHORS /usr/share/doc/grep/NEWS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/README /usr/share/doc/grep/THANKS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/TODO.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/copyright $ grep -l --exclude='*e*' . /usr/share/doc/grep/* outputs nothing, while one should get: /usr/share/doc/grep/AUTHORS /usr/share/doc/grep/NEWS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/README /usr/share/doc/grep/THANKS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/TODO.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/copyright excluding files whose base name contains a letter "e". And with grep 2.22, this is still inconsistent: ypig:~> grep -l --exclude=AUTHORS . /usr/share/doc/grep/* /usr/share/doc/grep/AUTHORS /usr/share/doc/grep/NEWS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/README /usr/share/doc/grep/THANKS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/TODO.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/copyright ypig:~> grep -rl --exclude=AUTHORS . /usr/share/doc/grep /usr/share/doc/grep/TODO.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/THANKS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/NEWS.gz /usr/share/doc/grep/copyright /usr/share/doc/grep/README -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)