Subject: Re: bug#4115: grep and null device

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:34:57 +0300

> From: "shippeys" <[email-masked]>
> Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:53:05 +0100

Please use Reply-All, to let the bug-tracker archive all the
discussion.

> > > grep: NUL: No such file or directory
> > 
> > Does Cygwin support NUL as the Windows null device?  If not, that's
> > your problem.
> > 
> 
> Yes - Would it be the grep.el code that gets confused and picks NUL?

You are using a native Windows port of Emacs.  NUL is the standard
name of the null device on that system.  Why do you think it gets
confused?

> AIUI the null device is only there to make sure the grep call doesn't hang
> if you forget to pass it files to search. It seems a lot of pain for a
> marginal benefit!

I don't know yet why null device is there.  Seeing the command line
would help.