Jim Meyering wrote:
What do you think, Paul? Switch the default and add an option for the current-default `--max-count=N`-trumps-`--context=N` behavior?
I am becoming inclined to change the behavior. That is, grep should consider --max-count=NUM to mean "only the first NUM matching lines count, as far as matches go". Any remaining lines do not match, by this definition. This would change the behavior in the way that's being requested.
This would also change the meaning of grep -v --max-count=NUM, since NUM would count matches (which is what grep --help says) rather than non-matches. This would make grep and grep -v inverses as they probably should be even when -m is used.
