Recursion with grep?

[Kirk Strauser]

At 2003-11-14T03:42:18Z, Francisco J Reyes <fran at natserv.net> writes:

> I think I am going to research what would it take for someone to fix grep
> and pay them.

Grep works perfectly in that respect, thanks - it's your understanding
that's a bit askew.  Say you're in a directory with 'file1.c', 'file2.c',
'file3.c', etc.  When you type:

    grep -r 'string' *.c

your shell (*not* grep!) is expanding your command line to:

    grep -r 'string' file1.c file2.c file3.c

Now, grep's man page says this:

       -r, --recursive
              Read all files under each directory, recursively; this is equiv-
              alent to the -d recurse option.

None of the arguments you specified at the command line are directories -
they're all files.  What would you say is the proper behavior for recursing
into a file?

grep did exactly what you asked it to; your request was not what you thought
it was, but grep had no way of knowing.

> How do think we would want grep to work?
>
> Do we want something like:
> grep -r <string> *.c

No.  We want to learn the proper usage of our tools.  Take a look at the
"find | grep" examples elsewhere in the thread.
-- 
Kirk Strauser

"94 outdated ports on the box,
 94 outdated ports.
 Portupgrade one, an hour 'til done,
 82 outdated ports on the box."
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