problem using call-process with grep

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

I hesitate whether to send this to emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs. I doubt
that this is a bug - it's probably user ignorance, because I see the same
behavior in both Emacs 20 and 22. Perhaps someone can tell me what the
problem is.

Type this in a file foo, ending the file with a newline:

alpha,beta,gamma,delta,epsilon

Evaluate this:

 (call-process "grep" nil
               (generate-new-buffer "Result")
               nil "epsilon$" "foo")

As expected, buffer Result contains the same text as file foo. The
evaluation returns 0.

Change the regexp passed to `grep' to this: "epsilon\\($\\)" and try again.
I expect the same result, but, instead, buffer Result is empty and the
evaluation returns 1.

If I run the Emacs `grep' command like this (with or without the options),
it works:

grep -nH -e "epsilon\\($\\)" foo

This gives the same result using Emacs `grep' (single backslashes):

grep "epsilon\($\)" foo

(Since these are not Lisp strings, but input args to the Emacs `grep'
command, which it passes on to the `grep' process, I'm a bit surprised to
see that the double-backslash version works, but it does.)

I'm using Cygwin `grep' (GNU `grep'), for which the doc says that \(, $, and
\) are supported in the usual way. And if I run grep from the Cygwin command
line (with either parenthetical regexp - single or double backslashes), it
works OK. I only have the problem when I use `call-process'.

I'm sure I'm missing something simple (doing something wrong in the call to
`call-process') - I'd be grateful for the explanation.

FWIW: The coding system for the file foo is undecided-unix. The defaults for
subprocess I/O are undecided-dos (decoding) and undecided-unix (encoding).
I've loaded cywin-mount.el, version 1.2.1 - 2001-05-13. shell-file-name is
"bash". w32-quote-process-arg is ?\". process-coding-system-alist is
(("bash" raw-text-dos . raw-text-unix)).

In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2005-06-26 on NONIQPC
X server distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc
(3.3) --cflags -I../../jpeg-6b-3/include -I../../libpng-1.2.8/include -I../.
./tiff-3.6.1-2/include -I../../xpm-nox-4.2.0/include -I../../zlib-1.2.2/incl
ude'

Thanks.