[techtalk] Limits of grep?

[Julie]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Andrew Wendt <awendt at putergeek.com>
To: Lotta Loytonen <lotta at infa.abo.fi>; <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 06:41
Subject: Re: [techtalk] Limits of grep?


> >> find . -type f -print | xargs grep <pattern> /dev/null
> 
> I don't get it. I doubt it hurts, but why the /dev/null?

Some grep's don't have an option for saying "regardless
of the number of files, always output the name of the file
being grep'd."  Adding /dev/null insures that there are always
at least two files on the grep command line and this forces
the output to always include the filename.

Some of us really =are= that old ;-)

-- Julie.