GNU grep-3.12 released

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 11, 2025

This is to announce grep-3.12, a stable release.


It's been nearly two years! There have been two bug fixes and many
harder-to-see improvements via gnulib. Thanks to Paul Eggert for doing
so much of the work and Bruno Haible for all the testing and all he does
to make gnulib a paragon of portable, reliable, top-notch code.


There have been 77 commits by 6 people in the 100 weeks since 3.11.


See the NEWS below for a brief summary.


Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:


  Bruno Haible (5)
  Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón (1)
  Collin Funk (1)
  Grisha Levit (1)
  Jim Meyering (31)
  Paul Eggert (38)


Jim
 [on behalf of the grep maintainers]
==================================================================


Here is the GNU grep home page:
    https://gnu.org/s/grep/


Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.12.tar.gz   (3.1MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.12.tar.xz   (1.9MB)


Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.12.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.12.tar.xz.sig


Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html


Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:


  025644ca3ea4f59180d531547c53baeb789c6047  grep-3.12.tar.gz
  ut2lRt/Eudl+mS4sNfO1x/IFIv/L4vAboenNy+dkTNw=  grep-3.12.tar.gz
  4b4df79f5963041d515ef64cfa245e0193a33009  grep-3.12.tar.xz
  JkmyfA6Q5jLq3NdXvgbG6aT0jZQd5R58D4P/dkCKB7k=  grep-3.12.tar.xz


Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 --check
from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD's cksum since 2007.


Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:


  gpg --verify grep-3.12.tar.gz.sig


The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:


  pub   rsa4096/0x7FD9FCCB000BEEEE 2010-06-14 [SCEA]
        Key fingerprint = 155D 3FC5 00C8 3448 6D1E  EA67 7FD9 FCCB 000B EEEE
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net>
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <meyering@fb.com>
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <meyering@gnu.org>


If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.


  gpg --locate-external-key jim@meyering.net


  gpg --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE


  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=grep&download=1' | gpg --import -


As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:


  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify grep-3.12.tar.gz.sig


This release is based on the grep git repository, available as


  git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/grep.git


with commit 3f8c09ec197a2ced82855f9ecd2cbc83874379ab tagged as v3.12.


For a summary of changes and contributors, see:


  https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grep.git;a=shortlog;h=v3.12


or run this command from a git-cloned grep directory:


  git shortlog v3.11..v3.12


This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.72.76-2f64
  Automake 1.17.0.91
  Gnulib 2025-04-04 3773db653242ab7165cd300295c27405e4f9cc79


NEWS


* Noteworthy changes in release 3.12 (2025-04-10) [stable]


** Bug fixes


  Searching a directory with at least 100,000 entries no longer fails
  with "Operation not supported" and exit status 2. Now, this prints 1
  and no diagnostic, as expected:
    $ mkdir t && cd t && seq 100000|xargs touch && grep -r x .; echo $?
    1
  [bug introduced in grep 3.11]


  -mN where 1 < N no longer mistakenly lseeks to end of input merely
  because standard output is /dev/null.


** Changes in behavior


  The --unix-byte-offsets (-u) option is gone. In grep-3.7 (2021-08-14)
  it became a warning-only no-op. Before then, it was a Windows-only no-op.


  On Windows platforms and on AIX in 32-bit mode, grep in some cases
  now supports Unicode characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane.

Read on