Re: Bug grep

[Mickey Ferguson]

>I just installed the latest Debian OS, basic system only and am
?disovering Linux. So, on a site it said: Also investigate the function
>grep. So I typed in : "grep -help" within the linux command line. This
>did nothing, except that I went inot a mode where I could only type, but
>not quit and go back to the command line.

First, I think what you wanted was "grep --help" (with TWO dashes, not one). 
That provides the help information I believe you wanted in the first place.

Second, as others have pointed out, what has happening was it was trying to 
get its input from STDIN, which means from the console.  In other words, 
that is a way for you to type a bunch of things in manually, and grep will 
process them on the fly.

The important point to note here is that the way to terminate supplying 
input from STDIN is to hit a control-Z.  (Well, I know on the windows 
systems it's ctrl-Z.  I haven't used any flavor of unix in over 15 years, 
but I seem to recall the EOF (end-of-file) marker is ctrl-D, so maybe you 
would terminate input with a ctrl-D instead.)  True, the ctrl-C will abort 
the program, but on the off chance you really wanted to process direct 
input, you indicate the end of your input stream with the above marker.