Re: Grep --directories option

[Marcus Brinkmann]

Hi,

the issue is not so much about grepping through the content of a "real"
directory.  As the directory content is binary encoded, that is almost never
useful.

I don't mind having skip behaviour on systems like GNU/Linux where
directories always really are directories (if that statement is even true).

In the Hurd, a directory might be a conventional directory.  However, it
might also be a strange non-standard thingie.  That thingie could allow
directory operations on it like a conventional directory.  However it could
also allow file operations on it like a conventional file.  For example, an
XML file could be accessed simply by "emacs foo.xml", but it could at the
same time implement a directory hierarchy for "ls foo.xml" that represents
the structure of the XML content.

I think that on the GNU/Hurd, the read behaviour is more favorable.  It allows
for scenarios like the above, without adding a lot of noise to greps output
in case you have a match with a directory content.  On systems where opening
a directory always fails, the error output of grep tends to annoy me,
though.  On such systems I would prefer skip to be the default behaviour.
How to differentiate these systems I don't know, maybe a "mkdir foo; cat foo"?
Or just using host_os

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    address@hidden
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
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