Re: compile.el::grep-program - should it use egrep instead of grep?

[Richard M. Stallman]

    Could you elaborate a little. The syntax of grep is not sufficient to
    make daily searches with M-x find-dired or M-x grep-find that happen
    frequently during searching system log files or looking into program
    and text document files.

That is a rather specialized activity.  It is a minor side issue as
regards the choice of default.  grep syntax resembles Emacs regexp
syntax, and grep is the "normal case" anyway, so grep will remain the
default.

If you prefer egrep as the default, you can set it in your .emacs.