> No, as that would mean the default output of grep would not be text, and
this could mess up terminals etc. This is partly why -a has never been
the default. If you want -a behavior you can use -a.

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

My best.,
Jeff

On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 6:59 AM Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

On 7/28/19 3:04 AM, Jeff Chua wrote:
> Then if it's binary file, grep should default to "-a"

No, as that would mean the default output of grep would not be text, and
this could mess up terminals etc. This is partly why -a has never been
the default. If you want -a behavior you can use -a.