Subject: Re: Recursive grep (where is limfree defined?)
To: Jeff Thieleke <thieleke@icaen.uiowa.edu>
From: None <Chris_G_Demetriou@NIAGARA.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 01/23/1996 08:31:29
> It is due to the way this particular find statment was written.  If I am not 
> mistaken, it starts a new grep process for each file encountered.  A 
> better method, using pipes and xargs was posted, but it goes to show how 
> treacherous using find for what (IMHO) grep could and should do.

if 'grep' should do FTS traversals, what is the argument that other
'text-processing' tools (cat, head, ed, vi, sed, yadda, yadda, yadda)
_shouldn't_?

The things that currently do operate recursively are (mostly? all?)
file tree management tools.  If you're going to start doing text
processing tools, why not do all of them?  (the answer: because doing
_any_ of them is unnecessary, non-standard, and "unhistorical.")

... and, it doesn't really solve the problem...  If you're searching a
file tree, do you want to blindly grep all files?  ("i've got an emacs
for you...")


cgd