Re: [PATCH v3] grep: correctly identify utf-8 characters with \{b,w} in -P

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 17, 2023, 15:19 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqr0vt9oj9.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <230117.865yd5z4ke.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

> To argue with myself here, I'm not so sure that just making this the
> default isn't the right move, especially as the GNU grep maintainer
> seems to be convinced that that's the right thing for grep(1).

OK.

Show 22 quoted lines

> I think calling this e.g.:
>
> 	grep.perl.Unicode=<bool>
> 	grep.patternTypePerl.Unicode=<bool>
>
> Or even:
>
> 	grep.patternTypePerl.Flags=u
>
> Would be better, i.e. PCRE's C API is really just mapping to the flags
> you can find in "perldoc perlre" (https://perldoc.perl.org/perlre). In
> this case the /u flag maps to the "PCRE2_UCP" API flag.
>
> That we happen to use PCRE to give ourselves "Perl" semantics is an
> implementation detail we should avoid exposing, so we could either give
> our config generic names, or literally map to the perl /flags/.
>
> For now we could just die on any "Flags" value that isn't "u".
>
> Of course all of this is predicated on us wanting to leave this as an
> opt-in, which I'm not so sure about. If it's opt-out we'll avoid this
> entire question,

Making it opt-out would also require a similar knob to turn the "flag" off, be it a configuration variable or a command line option, wouldn't it? I tend to agree with you that it makes sense to make it a goal to take us closer to "grep -P" from GNU---do they have such an opt-out knob? If not, let's make it simple by turning it always on, which would be the simplest ;-)

Again, thanks for a careful review with concrete points.