$ man grep says The period . matches any single character.
OK but it should also mention that illegal characters for the current locale will never be matched by ".". $ LC_ALL=C grep .東看 x.html|qprint -e <p>=E5?=91=E6=9D=B1=E7=9C=8B</p> $ LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8 grep .東看 x.html|qprint -e $ Also mention it on (info "(grep) Fundamental Structure").