--line-regexp option with null data

Question

Consider this command:

printf \'alpha\\nbravo\\ncharlie\\n\' | grep --line-regexp --quiet bravo

grep sees 3 lines separated by newline, and mat

Answer 1

This behavior was introduced with Grep 2.21:

When searching binary data, grep now may treat non-text bytes as line terminators. This can boost performance significantly.

So what happens now is that with binary data, all non-text bytes (including newlines) are treated as line terminators. If you want to change this behavior, you can:

• use --text. This will ensure that only newlines are line terminators

• use --null-data. This will ensure that only null bytes are line terminators