Package: grep

Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainers,

I would like to request a feature enhancement for the grep tool.

Feature Request

Allow the command 'grep -A' (without specifying a number) to default to showing all lines after a match, instead of erroring out. This would be conceptually equivalent to something like using a very large number ('grep -A 999999 <pattern>'), but without having to manually pick a placeholder length.

Current Behavior

$ grep -A <pattern>

grep: <pattern>: Invalid context length argument

Proposed Behavior

$ grep -A <pattern> # show all lines after match

Rationale

• Intuitive defaults: If no numeric limit is specified, show everything after the match.
  

• Cleaner syntax: Avoids the arbitrary use of large numbers. 
  
• Unix philosophy: Simple, predictable defaults that reduce friction. 
  
• Alternative approach: If there’s concern about backward compatibility, consider a more explicit flag like '-A all'

I acknowledge that some scripts may rely on the current error behavior for an empty '-A' argument. However, I believe that in most cases it would not cause significant breakage. If necessary, we could introduce a distinct option to avoid disrupting existing usage.

Thank you for considering this enhancement.

Best regards,

Karsten Holmøe