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Re: [PATCH] egrep: use easier language


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: Re: [PATCH] egrep: use easier language
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 12:52:31 -0700
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.11.0

On 10/2/22 11:21, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

-echo "$cmd: warning: $cmd is obsolescent; using @grep@ @option@" >&2
+echo "$cmd: warning: $cmd is obsolete; forwarding to @grep@ @option@" >&2

The warning left me a bit puzzled. "obsolescent" is a somewhat unusual word 
choice,
The distinction is important here; see <https://grammarist.com/usage/obsolescent-obsolete/>.

and "using" seemed like a misspelling of a request to the user ("(do) use
grep -E (in the future)"). egrep is not really using grep, but delegating to it.

Delegation is a form of use, no?

As it's not an object-oriented implementation, the technical term "delegating" has its own problems of confusion here. Other plausible alternatives I can think of ("invoking", "employing", "executing", "substituting", "falling back on", etc.) are all wordier than "using".

What do other programs do in this situation?



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