grep is always recursive

[Matthew Flaschen]

Lorenzo Luengo wrote:
>> It doesn't work because it's a poor script that cannot handle filenames
>> with paths. The script would also fail with:

I know it's a poor script. :)  It was meant as a simple proof of
concept.  I promise, it's not in production.

>> $ author_from_initials.sh ~/doc/*

You're violated the pre-conditions!

>> But, more importantly, Matthew has misunderstood the proposal. Only
>> filenames starting with a dash are prefixed with a ./ .

You're right.  I did miss that.  However, the script could easily be
changed to still not work. :)

#!/bin/sh
for filename in "$@"
do
    echo -n "$filename: "
    case $filename in
	-JES*)
	    echo "John Edwards Smith"
	    ;;
	-MJT*)
	    echo "Mary Jane Thompson"
	    ;;
	*)
	    echo "Author not found";
	    ;;
    esac
done

(file should now be named "-JES_proposal.txt"

> Should we file an /enhancement proposal/ to the bash developers??
> 
> I keep thinking it's a good idea.

It's not.  Yes, you can make a good argument that it only breaks "bad"
scripts like the one above.  But that's still not acceptable.  Scripts
that depend on standard well-defined behavior can't just stop working.

And you would might be surprised how many "bad" scripts there are.

Matt Flaschen