ack (3.0.2-1) unstable; urgency=low From upstream Changes: ack 3 no longer highlights capture groups. ------------------------------------------ ack 2 would highlight your capture groups. For example, ack '(set|get)_foo_(name|id)' would highlight the `set` or `get`, and the `name` or `id`, but not the full `set_user_id` that was matched. This feature was too confusing and has been removed. Now, the entire matching string is highlighted. ack 3's --output allows fewer special variables ----------------------------------------------- In ack 2, you could put any kind of Perl code in the `--output` option and it would get `eval`uated at run time, which would let you do tricky stuff like this gem from Mark Fowler (http://www.perladvent.org/2014/2014-12-21.html): ack --output='$&: @{[ eval "use LWP::Simple; 1" && length LWP::Simple::get($&) ]} bytes' \ 'https?://\S+' list.txt http://google.com/: 19529 bytes http://metacpan.org/: 7560 bytes http://www.perladvent.org/: 5562 bytes This has been a security problem in the past, and so in ack 3 we no longer `eval` the contents of `--output`. You're now restricted to the following variables: `$1` thru `$9`, `$_`, `$.`, `$&`, ``$` ``, `$'` and `$+`. You can also embed `\t`, `\n` and `\r` , and `$f` as stand-in for `$filename` in `ack2 --output` . -- Axel Beckert Wed, 24 Jul 2019 23:48:40 +0200 ack-grep (2.12-2) unstable; urgency=low The program "ack" is no more renamed to "ack-grep" since the conflicting "ack", a Kanji code converter, has been removed from Debian (see #662114). For a transitional phase of one Debian release, the package will though contain symlinks from ack-grep to ack for backwards compatibility. -- Axel Beckert Mon, 17 Feb 2014 18:03:56 +0100 ack-grep (2.04-1) unstable; urgency=low From upstream Changes: ack 2 makes some big changes in its behaviors that could trip up users who are used to the idiosyncracies of ack 1.x. These changes could affect your searching happiness, so please read them. Read the full list in /usr/share/doc/ack-grep/changelog.gz. -- gregor herrmann Sat, 11 May 2013 18:38:48 +0200