GNU bug report logs - #23234
unexpected results with charset handling in GNU grep 2.23

Previous Next

Full log

Message #32 received at 23234 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Norihiro Tanaka <noritnk <at> kcn.ne.jp>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: Bjoern Jacke <bjoern <at> j3e.de>, Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>,
 23234 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#23234: unexpected results with charset handling in GNU grep
 2.23
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2016 18:29:01 +0900

On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 18:25:16 -0700
Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> 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.

Hmm, diff does not output "Binary file matches" between text files, but
grep does it.

$ cp src/grep grep.bin
$ LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 src/grep g grep.bin
Binary file grep.bin matches
$ cat >grep.bin <<EOF
Binary file grep.bin matches
EOF
$ LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 src/grep g grep.bin
Binary file grep.bin matches

When a user got "Binary file matches" from grep, he can distinguish
whether matched a binary file or a line including "Binary file matches"
of a text file from only this result.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.