From: utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: net.bugs.v7
Title: grep manual page miswording 
Article-I.D.: utzoo.2694
Posted: Thu Dec 16 16:27:30 1982
Received: Thu Dec 16 16:27:30 1982

The grep(1) manual page is misleadingly worded when one considers
the effects of -v.  Things like the description of the exit status
are phrased in terms of when lines "match";  the -v option actually
inverts the meaning of this completely, but its description does
not say so.  For example, in the presence of -v, exit status is
0 if at least one line did *not* match the pattern.  This behavior
is clearly correct, and the manual page should be fixed to describe
it accurately.  The simplest thing to do is to reword the description
of -v to something like this:

	Invert the sense of matching;  ``match'' all lines which
	do \fInot\fR match the pattern.