"grep -rI ... /" vs. processing of /dev/ : should "--exclude-dir /dev" be required in order to avoid /dev/?

[Mark Millard]

I historically on occasion have done something like:

# grep -rI ... /

in order to find all instances of a text, including
in build trees and such. I now find that I need to
do something more like (using a more specific
example):

# grep -rI --exclude-dir /dev '#define.*__FreeBSD_version'

otherwise the grep ends up reading from the tty and waits
for it. Top shows, for example,

13470 root         22    0  12848Ki    2692Ki ttyin   11   0:00   0.00% grep -rI #define.*__FreeBSD_version /

Is this expected? Should I have always been using
"--exclude-dir /dev"? What lead to the behavior
change?

(FYI: The activity is normally as root.)

I'll note that I also got a couple of other messages
first:

grep: /dev/log: Operation not supported
grep: /dev/reroot/reroot: Operation not supported by device

I do not remember getting these in the past.

The issue happens with or without the -I part of the
grep command.


The context for the above is based on main 3acea07c1873 ,
or, in more detail,

# ~/fbsd-based-on-what-freebsd-main.sh
merge-base: 3acea07c1873b1e4042f4a4fa8668745ee59f15b
merge-base: CommitDate: 2021-02-08 19:15:21 +0000
c1845d00f818 (HEAD -> mm-src) mm-src snapshot for mm's patched build in git context.
3acea07c1873 (pure-src) Restore the augmented strlen commentary
FreeBSD FBSDFHUGE 14.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT mm-src-n244686-c1845d00f818 GENERIC-NODBG  amd64 amd64 1400004 1400004

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)