> If the user forgets to provide a filename to "M-x grep" (as in > "grep -nH foo") it will run indefinitely waiting for input from > stdin until killed. In such cases it's useful to have `null-device' > appended, even if the grep program supports the option "-H" (which > has an other purpose anyway).
Sometimes I miss a space between the regexp and the file name, i.e. instead of `grep -nH foo *' I type `grep -nH foo*' where `foo*' is interpreted by grep as a regexp with the empty file name. It takes some time before starting to worry why grep doesn't finish. `/dev/null' you proposed is of no help. It causes grep to print the finishing message `no matches found' which gives the false impression that the search string was not found by grep. This is worse than forcing you to type C-c C-k to kill the grep process that helps you to discover your mistake. Maybe grep.el should try to parse the grep command line and warn the user about a missing file name (e.g. by highlighting the command in the grep buffer in `compilation-error' face). This helps to notice the mistake sooner, but parsing the command is an unreliable method. -- Juri Linkov http://www.jurta.org/emacs/ _______________________________________________ Emacs-devel mailing list Emacs-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel
