CHANGES

# Changelog


## v5.1 (2026-04-08) Robert Tulke, rt@debian.sh

- Fix args.files always being empty due to two nargs='*' positionals;
  split patterns and files with trailing-path heuristic instead
- Fix PermissionError as dead code (subclass of OSError, wrong order)
- Fix -f/--file overwriting previous value; use action='append' now
- Fix --count + --stats inconsistency between stdin and file mode
- Add warning when -C is used together with -A or -B
- Eliminate triple regex scan per line; single find_all_matches call,
  apply_colors result cached for both stats and output
- apply_colors: O(n*m) string concatenation replaced with list + join
- ContextBuffer: replace unbounded printed_lines set with last_printed int
- Statistics.display: O(n^2) list.index in loop replaced with enumerate
- Strip \r\n instead of \n only to handle CRLF files correctly
- -e/--regexp: explicit pattern flag; all positionals become files
- -l/-L: --files-with-matches / --files-without-match
- -m/--max-count: stop after N matches per file
- -q/--quiet: suppress output, exit code only
- -H/--with-filename: per-line filename prefix (replaces section headers)
- --no-filename: suppress filename prefix
- -Z/--null: null-separated filename output for xargs -0
- -V/--version: print version and exit
- --color=always|never|auto with NO_COLOR env var support
- --include/--exclude: glob filters for recursive search
- --line-buffered: line-buffered stdout for tail -f pipelines
- --stats output moved to stderr to not pollute stdout pipelines
- Context groups separated by -- lines between non-adjacent blocks
- Remove redundant import os in BrokenPipeError handler
- Remove unused line_num variable in load_patterns_from_file
- extract_only_matches: add overlap deduplication matching apply_colors
- Add VERSION = '5.1' constant
- Rewrite README with all current flags and no emoji

## v5.0 (2025) Robert Tulke, rt@debian.sh
- Statistics mode with per-pattern counts
- Pattern file support
- Improved error handling
- Single-pass optimization
- Better unicode handling
- Broken pipe handling

## v4.0 Robert Tulke, rt@debian.sh
- Context lines support
- File and recursive operations
- Multiple output modes
- Binary file detection

## v3.0 Robert Tulke, rt@debian.sh
- Initial multi-pattern grep-based implementation