2016-08-12



There came up a quite interesting question, about why
     cat /var/log/apt/history.log | grep --color -i -E "engrampa|*"
works.

I analyzed it in detail.  [0] The essence is that the behavior is
undefined in this case, but
     grep --color -i -E  "engrampa|^"
does the same portably (as long as grep(1) supports `--color').

I.e. to highlight (``foo'') in the input, pipe through:

     egrep --color '^|foo'


[0]  https://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=161865&start=15#p1101262


http://marmaro.de/lue/        markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>