No, I'm using Emacs 24, and grep is reporting matches, but halting early
(omitting matches as a result), and signaling 123.
On Apr 16, 2013 5:08 PM, "Bob Proulx" <bob@proulx.com> wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
> > > Often, M-x rgrep terminates early with this message in the minibuffer:
> > >
> > > Grep exited abnormally with code 123
> >
> > According to this:
> >
> >
> http://superuser.com/questions/197031/grep-exits-abnormally-with-code-123-when-running-rgrep-on-emacs
> >
> > this is "normal" (well, everything except the message).
>
> It is normal.  It just means that there were no grep hits.  If there
> were grep hits then it would exit 0.  No grep hits and it is reporting
> 123.  It is a grep feature.
>
> You are probably using emacs 23.  Emacs 23 uses find piped to xargs to
> run grep.  That is an obsolete way of running it.  Emacs 24 now
> defaults to using only find to run grep.  And in 24 if there are no
> grep hits the return is captured and "Grep:exit [no match]" is
> displayed instead of a non-zero exit code.  Therefore what you are
> complaining about is already improved in the next version.
>
> To understand where the 123 comes from start looking at the grep
> documentation.
>
>   man grep
>   EXIT STATUS
>        The  exit  status is 0 if selected lines are found, and 1 if not
> found.
>        If an error occurred the exit status is 2.  (Note: POSIX error
> handling
>        code should check for '2' or greater.)
>
> If there are no matches then grep exits 1.
>
> The xargs command exit status is:
>
>   man xargs
>   EXIT STATUS
>        xargs exits with the following status:
>        0 if it succeeds
>        123 if any invocation of the command exited with status 1-125
>        124 if the command exited with status 255
>        125 if the command is killed by a signal
>        126 if the command cannot be run
>        127 if the command is not found
>        1 if some other error occurred.
>
>        Exit codes greater than 128 are used by the shell to  indicate
>  that  a
>        program died due to a fatal signal.
>
> And since grep exits 1 with no matches then xargs exits 123 as
> documented in the above table.
>
> Emacs 23 and earlier:
>   find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -e grep -nH -e PATTERN
>
> Emacs 24:
>   find . -type f -exec grep -nH -e PATTERN {} +
>
> > Perhaps consider submitting a bug report.
>
> Since it has already been addressed with a later version I would
> simply update the default grep-find pattern to the new find-only
> style.  Then it will be solved now.  Or upgrade to emacs 24. :-)
> Or just understand that exit 123 means no grep matches.
>
> You can customize the grep-find-command.  The v24 help for it says:
>
>   grep-find-command is a variable defined in `grep.el'.
>   Its value is ("find . -type f -exec grep -nH -e  {} +" . 34)
>   Original value was nil
>
>     This variable may be risky if used as a file-local variable.
>
>   Documentation:
>   The default find command for M-x grep-find.
>   In interactive usage, the actual value of this variable is set up
>   by `grep-compute-defaults'; to change the default value, use
>   Customize or call the function `grep-apply-setting'.
>
> Bob
>
>