grep regex whitespace behavior

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This looks like a behavior difference in the handling of \s between grep 2.5 and newer versions (a bug in old grep?). I confirm your result with grep 2.5.4, but all four of your greps do work when using grep 2.6.3 (Ubuntu 10.10).

Note:

GNU grep 2.5.4
echo "foo bar" | grep "\s"
   (doesn't match)

whereas

GNU grep 2.6.3
echo "foo bar" | grep "\s"
foo bar

Probably less trouble (as \s is not documented):

Both GNU greps
echo "foo bar" | grep "[[:space:]]"
foo bar

My advice is to avoid using \s … use [ \t]* or [[:space:]] or something like it instead.

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