On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 8:16 PM sur-behoffski <sur-behoff...@grouse.com.au> wrote: > On 2025-01-16 08:05, Paul Eggert wrote: > > On 2025-01-15 02:51, Anton Samokat wrote: > >> Please, make it more simple and straightforward, remove possible ambiguity > > > > Unfortunately these are competing goals. > > > > Perhaps this would be better: > > > > If no FILE is given read standard input, but if -r is given recursively > > search the working directory instead. > > [...] > > Interesting. How about: > > If no FILE is given, grep's behaviour depends on the -r (recursive) > option, which is disabled (non-recursive) by default: > > - If non-recursive, then read standard input; otherwise > - If recursive, examine all files in the working directory, > including recursively descending into subdirectories. > > No idea if this is good, bad, or indifferent... others can decide.
Thanks for the suggestions. I went with Paul's (keeping it concise is important), so --help now prints this: When FILE is '-', read standard input. If no FILE is given, read standard input, but with -r, recursively search the working directory instead. With fewer than two FILEs, assume -h. Exit status is 0 if any line is selected, 1 otherwise; if any error occurs and -q is not given, the exit status is 2. Here's the commit: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=v3.11-56-gfc6aba9 Marking this as done.
