This doesn't work for me, nor do the other two users' suggestions. I even just r...

dfc · on July 9, 2013

Are you using homebrew?

  $ brew info git 
  git: stable 1.8.3.2, HEAD
  http://git-scm.com
  /usr/local/Cellar/git/HEAD (1324 files, 29M) *
    Built from source with: --with-blk-sha1 --with-pcre
  From: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/git.rb
  ==> Dependencies
  Optional: pcre, gettext
  ==> Options
  --with-blk-sha1
	Compile with the block-optimized SHA1 implementation
  --with-gettext
	Build with gettext support
  --with-pcre
	Build with pcre support
  --without-completions
	Disable bash/zsh completions from "contrib" directory

What does "built from source with" say?

gruseom · on July 9, 2013

I don't use homebrew, but your comment made me realize what I needed to do to successfully compile git with pcre. As a result, this now works:

  git grep -P "outer\b"

Yay! Thank you and moonboots.

This is an important feature for me, because I organize my code lexically (primarily by being disciplined about using unique names for things) and rely on grep to quickly find what I want. Occasionally one unique name overlaps with another, and then I really want to match the word boundary.