On 06/03/2016 21:19, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
> The most recent version of grep is causing problems.  If it processes a file
> that has a character that is not in the LANG, it stops processing and outputs
> "Binary file <name> matches".
> 
> This problem came up in building lxqt as the .desktop files have a lot of
> characters for different languages.  I think these are all utf-8, but I'm not
> sure.
> 
> There are several ways to work around this problem.
> 
> 1.  export GREP_OPTIONS=--text or it's equivalent GREP_OPTIONS=-a
> 
> The man pages says
> 
> GREP_OPTIONS
>    This variable specifies default options to be placed in front of any
> explicit options. As this causes problems when writing portable scripts, this
> feature will be removed in a future release of grep, and grep warns if it is
> used. Please use an alias or script instead.
> 
> 2. I don't think an alias would be a good option as that would not be picked
> up in scripts.
> 
> alias grep='grep -a'
> 
> 3.  We could create a script like yacc.
> 
> cd /bin
> mv grep grep.orig
> cat >> grep << EOF
> #! /bin/sh
> exec /bin/grep.orig --text "$@"
> EOF
> 
> But there are times when we do not want the --text behavior.
> 
> 4.  export LANG=en_US.utf8 where necessary.
> 
> The problem here is trying to pick up all the places where it is necessary. 
> If a user already has LANG set to a value like fr_FR.utf8, I don't think it
> would be needed.  It also would not solve the problem if there are non-utf8
> characters in the file being searched.
> 
> I'll note that I have already addressed this in
> 
>   http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/cacerts.html
> 
> where I had to add export LANG=en_US.utf8 to /usr/bin/make-ca.sh.
> 
> For right now, I'm going to go with 4, but am not totally happy with that
> solution.
> 
> Feedback appreciated.
> 

I realize that, although I set LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, jhalfs sets LC_ALL=C (this
can be changed, but I just realize this now). That may be why I got issues
with lxqt .desktop files. OTOH, from man grep:
---------------------
Within  a bracket expression, a range expression consists of two characters
separated by a hyphen.  It matches any single character that sorts  between
the  two  characters,  inclusive, using the locale's collating sequence and
character set.  For example, in the default C locale, [a-d]  is  equivalent
to  [abcd]. Many locales sort characters in dictionary order, and in these
locales [a-d] is typically not equivalent to [abcd]; it might be equivalent
to  [aBbCcDd],  for  example.   To obtain the traditional interpretation of
bracket expressions, you can  use  the  C  locale  by  setting  the  LC_ALL
environment variable to the value C.
--------------------
So if a package build system relies on the LC_ALL=C behavior, "4" could lead
to issues...

But I do not have a better alternative to propose.

Pierre
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