From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Proulx Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: searching elisp on debian/ubuntu Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:55:54 -0600 Message-ID: <20131025155554.GA585@hysteria.proulx.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1382716575 15429 80.91.229.3 (25 Oct 2013 15:56:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:56:15 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Oct 25 17:56:19 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VZjkJ-0007Es-6H for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 17:56:19 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59811 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VZjkI-00034K-ST for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:56:18 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58946) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VZjk2-00032q-C1 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:56:08 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VZjjw-0008UJ-Ch for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:56:02 -0400 Original-Received: from joseki.proulx.com ([216.17.153.58]:34165) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VZjjw-0008U1-6D for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:55:56 -0400 Original-Received: from hysteria.proulx.com (hysteria.proulx.com [192.168.230.119]) by joseki.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2DF22122C for ; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:55:54 -0600 (MDT) Original-Received: by hysteria.proulx.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id B4DC22DCC2; Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:55:54 -0600 (MDT) Mail-Followup-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 216.17.153.58 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:94215 Archived-At: Rustom Mody wrote: > ... nuisance ... > find /usr/share/emacs/23.4/lisp *.gz|xargs zgrep > because zgrep unlike grep has no recursive flag I am compelled to disagree. If we were sitting around a pub this would be a good philosophical discussion! In the meantime we will just have to do it virtually on email. :-) Sure 'grep' added a --recursive option. But it added a huge amount of code for it too. And immediately people started filing bugs saying they wanted it to do something different on different types of files. They wanted to ignore special files like character devices. Or they didn't. They wanted it to skip over pipes instead of blocking reading them waiting for input. And then another said they were using that feature and wanted it to read pipes. And of course people asked to skip some file name patterns. And then others wanted to include some. Should it follow symbolic links or not? Pretty soon all of 'find' must be recreated using a different syntax. And after having learned how to work grep's implementation of recursive behavior it might not work for other utilities that might implement it differently. Using 'find' is superior. Once you learn the syntax of find you can apply it to any of the utilities. The 'find' command is a general purpose command that works not just in one program like grep but in all of the other programs and utilities on the system! So I think that your lament about zgrep lacking --recursive and needing to use find is not about a lack in zgrep but rather about a lack of vision in grep and the good design of Unix and find that find was already there to do the job. Find was there for zgrep even though zgrep had not been written when find was written. It isn't a nuisance. It is a joy of good design! :-) Bob