bug#24347: Bug when grepping a text file with some arbitrary binary data

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden wrote:
> this
> is a case where meeting user expectations should outweigh being
> POSIXly correct.

This issue is independent of POSIXLY_CORRECT, since POSIX does not specify what 
'grep' should do when given non-text input. Portable scripts cannot rely on 
grep's default behavior here, as different grep implementations behave quite 
differently. Some even dump core (which POSIX allows!).

> Just think how it will cut down the number of bug
> reports about this

If only it would! But I'm afraid we'd start getting bug reports from the other 
side of the issue.

Anyway, as noted in Bug#22838 the heuristic has recently (post-2.5) been jogged 
in the direction that I think you prefer, and perhaps that will be good enough 
even if it's not exactly what you asked for. See:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=bf3ee23890db33e3d0bef5344e896d2cdfaa34aa