* Since your situation, is one like this: "This is not a bug. - .... :: *is* description list syntax"--i.e. you are grep-ing for what Emacs Org-Mode is seeing as a "description list"; and, this is "by design"
e.g.:
* Lord of the Rings
- Elijah Wood :: He plays Frodo
- Sean Astin :: He plays Sam, Frodo's friend. I still remember
him very well from his role as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies.
** In such a case: I reiterate my earlier suggestion--and my opinion is one should always strive to do it this way too--its POSIX compliant--its easier to read and you won't run into inconsistencies in your code:
Suggest you do it this way instead: Use "POSIX character classes" like [:blank:] whenever possible--so in this case you could try to do something like this (you'd have to test it yourself--if you're still interested--again my environment throws no error exceptions):
** In your shell:
export BLANK="[[:blank:]]"
** Then load your Emacs OrgMode buffer as you did before; and, try something like this instead:
* [[shell:cat ~/tmp | grep "asdf :"]]
* [[shell:cat ~/tmp | grep "asdf ::"]]
* [[shell:cat ~/tmp | grep "asdf$BLANK::$BLANK]]
--again, this all worked for me--but they all worked for me before too while yours failed
** Say, anyone no how to do something like this:
export PIPE="|"
---I mean, does anyone know how to use some other character or whatever instead of "|" within the "[[...]]"?---I often find myself wanting to insert a pipe in there and then put the whole thing in an OrgTable cell--but we all know "|" is the cell divider in OrgMode
** Or does anyone know how to easily change the OrgTable cell barrier to a key other than "|"? (then I could freely use the "|" in an OrgTable cell)