Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:9288 comp.unix.questions:7547
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdragon!watsol!tbray
From: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: grep replacement
Summary: I stand by my position
Keywords: grep, nm, unix consistency
Message-ID: <7349@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 14 Jun 88 13:34:55 GMT
References: <7882@alice.UUCP> <5630@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <6866@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <2978@ihlpe.ATT.COM> <1463@laidbak.UUCP> <4524@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> <2274@isis.UUCP> <7207@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <239@eutrc3.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 17

>In article <7207@watdragon.waterloo.edu> I wrote:
>}Grep should, where reasonable, not be bound by the notion of a 'line'.
...
>}The source is scattered inconveniently.  The obvious thing to do is: 
>}grep -l _memcpy *.o
>}That this often will not work is irritating.

At least a dozen people have sent me alternate ways of doing this, the 
most obvious using 'nm'.  Look, I KNOW ABOUT NM! But you're missing the 
point - suppose the item in the .o files was another type of string, e.g.
an error message.  

The point is:  There are some files.  One or more may contain a string in
which I am interested.  grep -l is a tool which is supposed to tell me whether
one or more files contain a string.  The fact that it refuses to do so for 
a class of magic files is a gratuitous violation of the unix paradigm.
Tim Bray, New Oxford English Dictionary Project, U of Waterloo