GNU bug report logs - #20526
BUG: text file is detected as binary

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Message #38 received at 20526 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Kamil Dudka <kdudka <at> redhat.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>, Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 20526 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Sebastian Pöhn <sebastian.poehn <at> gmail.com>,
 debbugs-submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org, =?UTF-8?Q?P=C3=B6hn <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#20526: BUG: text file is detected as binary
Date: Tue, 12 May 2015 10:41:53 +0200

On Monday 11 May 2015 21:27:35 Paul Eggert wrote:
> Perhaps we can improve the behavior of grep by changing its heuristic
> slightly. Currently grep reports "Binary file FOO matches" if it finds
> binary data in FOO before it finds the first match.  Instead, perhaps we
> could change grep to report "Binary file FOO matches" when it sees that
> it's about to generate binary *output* copied from FOO, regardless of
> whether this output represents the first match.  That is, when grep sees
> that it's about to output binary data, grep instead outputs "Binary file
> FOO matches" and then stops output for FOO (even if it already output some
> lines for ordinary matches in FOO).
> 
> This approach would fix the problem of grep trashing the output stream, and
> it should be less drastic than grep's current approach, in that it would
> make grep more likely to do what Kamil Dudka is asking for (assuming grep
> is given mostly valid input interspersed with small amounts of binary
> data).

Thanks for the suggestion!  I believe that such approach would work for me.  
Do you want me to write a patch implementing it?

Eric, what do you think about the change proposed above?

Kamil

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