[gentoo-user] Re: Is grep broken?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-07-01, Peter Humphrey <peter@××××××××××××××.org> wrote:

> Can anyone explain this to me?
>
> $ /bin/grep -r hmenu *html
> index.html:                     <div id="hmenu">
> master.html:                    <div id="hmenu">
> pictures.html:                  <div id="hmenu">

The shell expands *html to a list of html files in the current
directory.  IOW, you explicitly gave grep a list of html files
to search.  The -r flag does nothing in that case.

You appear to want to search all files underneath the current
directory who's name matches the shell glob pattern "*html".
If that's the case, then what you meant to say was:

  find . -name '*html' | xargs grep hmenu

> $ /bin/grep -r hmenu pages/*html
> pages/community.html:                   <div id="hmenu">
> pages/contacts.html:                    <div id="hmenu">
> pages/history.html:                     <div id="hmenu">
> pages/music.html:                       <div id="hmenu">
> pages/news.html:                        <div id="hmenu">
> pages/people.html:                      <div id="hmenu">
> pages/pictures.html:                    <div id="hmenu">
>
> Grep is clearly disobeying the recursion command. I started noticing this a
> few days ago, and it's making maintenance of this directory hard work.

Again, you gave grep an explicit list of files to search, so
the -r option doesn't do anything.  In this case, it's not
obvious what you intend, so I'll refrain from guessing.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I want to kill
                                  at               everyone here with a cute
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