Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: grep
A common user error pattern is to call a recursive grep and miss off the
trailing '.' for current directory. This causes grep to wait
indefinitely for stdin, but users will presume it is just taking a long
time to search and will leave it running
$ grep -r PATTERN
...
...
...<indefinite pause>
This is on Ubuntu karmic running the latest GNU grep 2.5.4
Contrastingly, on a Apple Mac running OS X and grep (GNU grep) 2.5.1 a
helpful warning is printed in this case which immediately guides the
user to their mistake
$ grep -r PATTERN
grep: warning: recursive search of stdin
I presume this is a custom patch that has been applied to the grep
binary that ships with OSX (rather than a warning message that has been
purposefully removed), therefore I suggest this warning message is added
to the default code base.
ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Oct 21 15:49:26 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: grep 2.5.4-4
ProcEnviron:
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: grep
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
** Affects: grep
Importance: Unknown
Status: Unknown
** Affects: grep (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Tags: apport-bug i386
--
grep does not print warning when recursively grepping stdin
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/457277
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