On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 12:52 PM Jim Meyering <j...@meyering.net> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 9:02 AM php fan <php4...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have no idea what triggers this, so I haven't been able to produce a > > minimal reproducing example; and I can't share the actual folder with > > which this happens to me all the time. > > > > Sometimes I use "grep -R" on a folder with several repositories, and > > after a few legitimate results, I get a blob of dozens of lines of > > text, coming from several files, with no indication of the file they > > belong to, and which often don't match the pattern. > > > > For example: > > > > ``` > > $ grep -R foo > > path/to/file1.txt: lorem ipsum foo bar > > path/to/file2.txt: lalalalala foo lalalala > > and here's a blob of totally unrelated text > > that doen't contain the string > > who knows where this comes from > > lalalallaal lorem ipsum dolor sit amet > > ``` > > > > I am NOT talking about the case where you have a file that is one very > > long line that matches, so you get basically the whole file in the > > output and it gets wrapped. In that case, it will still start with the > > path of the file followed by a colon. Not in this case. > > Thanks for the report. Can you tell me how to reproduce that? I have > never seen such a failure. > We'd need system type, version of grep, and names/contents of the > files in the searched directory.
Can you share the names of the files in that directory? I.e., run this: cd YOUR_DIR && find . -print | cat -A Also, please rerun your command but pipe its output through "cat -A", to see if there are unexpected characters in the output: $ grep -R foo | cat -A If that shows nothing surprising, please consider sharing a sample of real output where you've substituted XXX for any sensitive file names or contents.
