Re: Grep --directories option

[Paul Jarc]

"Paul Eggert" <eggert@twinsun.com> wrote:
> * Change the default to be --directories='recurse'.
>
> This is simple and portable, and it's more useful than the current
> behavior.

I think skipping is more useful by default, since directories may
often appear accidentally in wildcard-generated lists.  I suggest
making the default "skip with a warning":
$ mkdir foo
$ grep pattern foo; echo $?
grep: foo: skipping directory
1

The warning could be suppressed by an explicit --directories=skip
option.  Hurd users can use a shell alias like grep='grep -d read' if
they like that behavior and if they're confident they won't specify
directories by accident.


paul