GNU bug report logs -
#23234
unexpected results with charset handling in GNU grep 2.23
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Reported by: Björn JACKE <bjoern <at> j3e.de>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 20:45:01 UTC
Severity: normal
Done: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.
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Message #23 received at 23234 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):
On 04/06/2016 04:15 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> And yes, maybe we could change grep to print the "Binary file matches"
> message to stderr, but that in turn will probably break other scripts,
> and lead to even more complaints from people doing non-standard things
> and expecting consistent results.
Yes, I'm dubious about this idea. grep's behavior was inspired by diff's
similar behavior, and grep and diff have worked that way for many years
and I expect people depend on it. POSIX says that diff should output its
binary-file message to stdout, and I expect that if POSIX standardized
grep's behavior on binary files it would do something similar.
> Maybe changing the exit status when a binary file is encountered is
> worth doing
Possibly, though I don't see the use case yet. If it's needed I suggest
doing the change only if a new option is specified
(--binary-files=error, say) so that it's upward-compatible with existing
behavior.
This bug report was last modified 9 years and 46 days ago.
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