Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 13:20:32 -0800
From: "David O'Brien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've got a notion to change this.
Please don't change the algorithm to deduce which files are binary.
It was the subject of much design discussion in the GNU project, and
is fairly consistent across other GNU applications.
The -CURRENT grep is also very misleading w/ ``grep -l'' in that
you will get "hits" on binary files because you can't see that "is
a binary file" message to know better.
I find it useful to see the names of all files matching the pattern.
This is particularly the case with grep -r. grep -lr should not
output a bunch of error messages saying ``Binary file FOO skipped'',
as that information is less useful than simply either reporting the
file as matching, or not reporting it because it doesn't match.
I can't imagine how many people are going to get weird/eronious
output from scripts now due to it.
The binary file behavior was added to grep in response to many user
requests. Users didn't like seeing a lot of binary data sent to their
screens. grep's new `-r' option seems to have contributed a lot more
requests of this form.
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