Re: address@hidden: grep-tree doesn't shell-quote-argument]

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     The old grep-find interface is "a hack" (a  way to
>     start a compile-like command which runs find | grep.
>
> But it is quite like M-x grep, and that makes for consistency.  I
> think that nearly everyone who uses grep-find will have used M-x grep
> first, and will therefore find grep-find quite natural.

Unless they also find grep quite un-natural (and unfriendly)!  I do!

In practice, I almost never use M-x grep, as I usually want to search
in subdirectores too, and grep doesn't do that.  And I find the old
grep-find interface way too slow.

So I use M-x grep-tree 99% of the time -- and really dislike M-x grep
when I use it.

> It could be the case that we could make both grep and grep-find easier
> for beginners to use, in a consistent way.  

Yes, IMO the right approach would be to change M-x grep too to be
like (the new) M-x grep-find, i.e. prompt for REGEXP + FILES, and
then run grep with the proper args.  

A user can still use C-u M-x grep to enter the "expert mode"
with the old-style shell command.  

And setting grep-prompt-style to 'shell will get the old behaviour of
both M-x grep and M-x grep-find.

Now, that would ensure consistency, and give both M-x grep and M-x
grep-find a much more user friendly interface.

>                                             But let's wait till after
> the release for that change.
>
I know we are close to starting the pretest, but since grep-tree is new,
we should definitely fix this issue before the release.  

After the release, people will start using and customize it, so when
we later clean things up, we would remove grep-tree and rename various
defcustoms; that would be incompatible too!

So it's now or never...

> For now, I would suggest we consider making the new feature grep-tree
> more convenient in a way that isn't incompatible for old features
> such as grep-find.

M-x grep-tree was convenient already -- but it was suggested to
merge it into grep-find ...  which need to make "incompatible"
changes to grep-find to remain convenient.

The code for grep-find is almost complete anyway -- and I can easily
modify M-x grep to comply.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk