Re: Bug of grep -E

Eric Blake <[email protected]> Wed, 6 Dec 2017 09:32:57 -0600
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.utils.bugs
Organization Red Hat, Inc.
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 12/06/2017 09:02 AM, iPack wrote:
> [urain39@urain39-pc ~]$ cat test
> https://konachan.com/image/a4ff5caad2fa35faa2271df9badacd35/Konachan.com%20-%20255941%20blush%20brown_eyes%20crying%20fate_kaleid_liner_prisma_illya%20fate_%28series%29%20japanese_clothes%20kimono%20long_hair%20miyu_edelfelt%20purple_hair%20tagme_%28artist%29%20tears.jpg
> 
> [urain39@urain39-pc ~]$ cat test | grep -Eo '[0-9a-f]{32}/[0-9A-Za-z%_\.\-]+'
> a4ff5caad2fa35faa2271df9badacd35/Konachan.com%20-%20255941%20blush%20brown_eyes%20crying%20fate_kaleid_liner_prisma_illya%20fate_%28series%29%20japanese_clothes%20kimono%20long_hair%20miyu_edelfelt%20purple_hair%20tagme_%28artist%29%20tears.jpg
> 
> [urain39@urain39-pc ~]$ cat test | grep -Eo '[0-9a-f]{32}/[0-9A-Za-z\-%_\.]+'
> a4ff5caad2fa35faa2271df9badacd35/Konachan.com%20
> 
> It is bug ? or just my syntax error ?

Your syntax error.

In the C locale,

[0-9A-Za-z%_\.\-] matches digits, letters, %, _, \ (listed twice, but
the second listing is ignored), ., and -.

[0-9A-Za-z\-%_\.] matches digits, letters, the range of ASCII bytes
between \ and % (whoops - in ASCII, \ is 47 but % is 37 - you have a
backwards range, so that portion of the range expression matches nothing
at all), then _, \, and .  Hence, '-' is not one of the characters
matched, and grep's output is shorter.  POSIX permits the implementation
you saw; it also permits an implementation that refuses to grep at all
by declaring your regex invalid because of the backwards range.

In non-C locales, use of - in a [] expression that is not either the
first or the last member of the set is implementation-defined, and all
bets are off on what it matches (lately, GNU tools have been moving
towards rational-range-interpretation, which means treating the range as
the same bytes as it would match in the C locale; but other
implementations, or even older versions of GNU tools, tried to get fancy
and match any character that would collate between the two endpoints,
which gets weird fast).

It _looks_ like you were trying to use \- and \. as escape characters.
But inside [] (at least, the Extended Regular Expression syntax of 'grep
-E' as defined by POSIX), \ is not an escape character; and nothing
needs escaping (there are only special rules about where ], ^, and - are
handled).  Yes, there are other flavors of regex engines (perl, for
example) where \ DOES act as an escape even inside [].  Which is why it
is essential that you know the quirks of each regex engine you are
targetting.

By the way, bug-gnu-utils is no longer the preferred bug reporting
address for grep; it means your version of grep is probably quite
outdated.  These days, 'grep --help' suggests [email protected] for
reporting bugs.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org
signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 619 B)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: Public key at http://people.redhat.com/eblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEccLMIrHEYCkn0vOqp6FrSiUnQ2oFAlooDakACgkQp6FrSiUn
Q2pdlAf8DkJDh9AU1QHg7r8l1XFegtqDtKOIHMafN6EvO2uFoIXyOltaD/Fw3fAC
vn+nkfmgoJRlVvzQvQhxfXpbEkfXGrmRFpiBUR1EyhvxJHdWgUy4n/M/w1XU9bhS
rbZBgdzUUKWCJICDupxi6Whgj/2DadLkw6ipQ7gyRuQzG9Cv1CxzelikxgCD4mKM
CJcXuLT4AxCvWCFVeHDX+zU6nlKnugl915zg/+xvlAI0a/0NaQXG87vYIlTLmbmf
Sj2gh0OQ1LnQUyzBKG1lF2/RH7xAiFZxXt7Mmnwso67R/k7g0vzoVyB6OiCrgl/J
8ghbN/qRm/GT/P1w+O4U6acrCJGe1A==
=69Kw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----