Re: Text copied from *grep* buffer has NUL (0x00) characters

[Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

> 2) Copying text from a *grep* buffer that looks like ":" should not suddenly
>    deliver a NUL character instead. That's just unexpected and prone to
>    problems down the line.

This "what you see in NOT what you get" is indeed undesirable.  I'm not
sure it's easy to fix in a reliable way in Emacs (beside not using
`--null` as Eli points out), but I suggest you `M-x report-emacs-bug`.
Maybe grep-mode can add a `filter-buffer-substring-function` that
converts those NUL into `:`.

For the detection of NULs in UTF-8 files, you could also ask for such
a feature via `M-x report-emacs-bug` but it should be pretty easy to get
something comparable with something like:

    (defun my-utf-8-nul-check ()
      (save-excursion
        (goto-char (point-min))
        (when (search-forward "\000" nil t)
          (error "NUL!!"))))
    (add-hook 'before-save-hook #'my-utf-8-nul-check)


-- Stefan