Re: grep recursive problem

[Chuck Swiger]

On Oct 19, 2006, at 6:04 AM, dan1 wrote:
> I am trying to find text in some files and it works fine when I  
> type the following command from inside the directory where the file  
> contains the text searched for:
> grep -r -i i80word *.php
>
> However if I go one directory up and type the same command, there  
> is no result at all, like if the '-r' otion would not be taken into  
> account. I tried --recursive but the result is the same.
>
> I think that this is a bug, could you please confirm ?

It's not a bug; this is user-error.  Unless you've got directories  
named something.php, using -r together with a wildcard which does not  
match anything will not do what you expect.  Try:

        grep -i i80word */*.php

...or...

        find /some/path -name *.php | xargs grep -i i80word

...instead.  The manpage provides a reasonable explanation:

       -d ACTION, --directories=ACTION
              If  an  input file is a directory, use ACTION to  
process it.  By
              default, ACTION is read, which means that directories   
are  read
              just  as if they were ordinary files.  If ACTION is  
skip, direc-
              tories are silently skipped.  If ACTION is recurse,   
grep  reads
              all  files under each directory, recursively; this is  
equivalent
              to the -r option.

--
-Chuck