Subject: Tweak to man page
From: Robert Bruntz <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2021 14:38:18 -0500
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi there -
  I would like to recommend a minor tweak to the man page for GNU grep.
(The version I'm looking at is 2.20, but I doubt that matters.)
  I would recommend changing the description of the -l and -L options from
this:
The scanning will stop on the first match.
  to something like this:
The scanning of a file will stop on the first match.
  The reason for this is that the first version is ambiguous, in that it
could be read as the grep command itself will stop at the first match, thus
printing only the name of the first file that matches (-l) or doesn't match
(-L), rather than the scanning of each file will stop on the first match
and start again on the next file.
  Admittedly, this functionality doesn't make much sense, but most users
don't use all the functionality of a command, so some of it doesn't make
sense on the first encounter (or even much later), and I admit that at one
point that's exactly what happened to me in this very case ("Why would you
only want the name of the first file that matches and none of the others?
That's kind of bizarre.")
  Please let me know if any of the above is unclear (unless, of course, you
stopped reading at the first nonsensical part and skipped on to the next
email).
  Thanks!
---
Robert Bruntz, PhD
Associate Scientist, PCSE dept. at CNU
[email-masked]
757-594-8570 (office)
817-899-7716 (cell)