On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 21:00 -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > grep 2.5.4 was the last version that supported the -P option to > > grep through for multiple lines. > > Does anybody know why it was dropped? perl compatible regexes in grep have always been "experimental" and never officially supported. >From the grep manual https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html --perl-regexp Interpret the pattern as a Perl-compatible regular expression (PCRE). This is highly experimental, particularly when combined with the -z (--null-data) option, and ‘grep -P’ may warn of unimplemented features. See Other Options. It wasn't dropped so much as "enhanced" away. Oh well.