bug#8084: 24.0.50; Grep output not usable in Ubuntu

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

>> In a default install of Ubuntu Maverick, M-x grep doesn't seem to work
>> very well.  The problem seems to be related to Ubuntu grep having
>> colourising switched on by default.
>
> How did they switch on colours by default? I would have guessed it's
> just a shell alias, which shouldn't affect Emacs.

D'oh!  It is:

larsi@lenovo:~$ type grep
grep is aliased to `grep --color=auto'

That explains why doing stuff like

GREP_COLORS=never grep ...

doesn't work for me...  How silly.

But does Emacs bypass the shell alias settings?

> In any case, it's kind of odd that this would cause a problem, since
> Emacs itself turns on grep colours by default - see
> grep-highlight-matches and grep-process-setup.

The former is 'auto for me.  But still I'm getting...

gnus.el:4080:  ;; "[01;31mhello[m", and the select method is ("[01;31mhello[m" (my-var "something"))

Oh, d'oh again!

I have

(global-font-lock-mode -1)

and that makes the escape codes not work.

So this is all user error, I think.  Or should M-x grep work if you have
font locking switched off?  It's not only that the output of M-x grep is
unreadable, but `next-error' doesn't work the first time, either.  (The
second and subsequent times it does work.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen