Re: [PATCH 2/3] dfa: new option DFA_STRAY_BACKSLASH_WARN

[Paul Eggert]

On 6/3/22 20:18, Bruno Haible wrote:
> This warning punishes a traditional habit, namely to backslash-escape
> a leading ASCII '-' character, so as to avoid it from being interpreted
> as an option.

That's the first I've heard of that habit. Even 7th Edition Unix 
supported 'grep -e PAT FILE', but I guess some nonstandard grep 
implementations removed -e. These days, although I would think 'grep -- 
PAT FILE' would work everywhere, there may be scripts that still use 
that old habit.

If we want to support "grep '\-PAT' FILE", we can do so in grep rather 
than in dfa.c; it might not be wise to treat \- as - everywhere, as that 
would preclude future extensions such as A\-B meaning r.e. subtraction. 
We could add something like the attached to GNU grep, if you and Jim 
think it's a good idea (I hope Jim doesn't get tired of these "just one 
more thing" changes before a release...).

0001-grep-don-t-diagnose-grep-c.patch
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