man egrep:

---
The period .  matches any single character.  The symbol \w
is  a  synonym  for  [[:alnum:]]  and  \W is a synonym for
[^[:alnum]].
---

First manual bug: [^[:alnum]] should be [^[:alnum:]]

Second test \W per paragraph above:

---
# egrep [\W] -
1
2
!
#
W
W
W
W
---

It's matching a W instead of any non-alphanum.

---
Thomas T. Thai

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