tags 78415 + notabug stop On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 6:58 PM Matěj Cepl <mc...@cepl.eu> wrote: > manpage grep(1) describes the difference between -r and -R options thus: > > -r, --recursive > Read all files under each directory, recursively, following > symbolic links only if they are on the command line. Note > that if no file operand is given, grep searches the working > directory. This is equivalent to the -d recurse option. > > -R, --dereference-recursive > Read all files under each directory, recursively. Follow all > symbolic links, unlike -r. > > It seems to me that outside of this advertised difference in > following/non-following symlinks, -R option also makes grep to > search through hidden directories. Is it so? Wouldn’t it be a > good idea to put it into a manpage?
Please tell us why you think that. At least for me, with either -r or -R, grep searches directories whose names start with ".": $ mkdir -p .j/.j && cd .j && echo a > .j/a $ grep -r a .j/a:a $ grep -R a .j/a:a I'm marking this as done. If you show evidence of a problem, it's easy to reopen.
