--include does the same as --exclude!

[Olaf Lenz]

Binary package hint: grep

> lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu maverick (development branch)
Release: 10.10

I'm using maverick beta that contains grep 2.6.3.

When using the '--include' option to grep (mainly used for recursive matching), grep 2.6.3 does not behave as expected. In fact, it works like '--exclude', but only in the top level directory.

Example:
1. Create a subdirectory that contains two files "file.has" and "file.hasnot". Both files contain only the string 'test'.
>mkdir test
>cd test
>echo "test" > file.has
>echo "test" > file.hasnot

2. Now I do:
> grep --include="file.has" -l test *
file.hasnot

I would expect the command to output "file.has". The behavior shown is the behavior of "--exclude":

> grep --exclude="file.has" -l test *
file.hasnot

This is not a very practical example and doesn't show the maximal confusion. So another demonstration:

1. Create a new subdirectory and make an additional copy of the files into the subdir.
> mkdir sub
> cp file.* sub/

2. Now do the above commands recursively:
> grep -rl --include="file.has" test *
file.hasnot
sub/file.has
> grep -rl --exclude="file.has" test *
file.hasnot
sub/file.hasnot

This is definitely not the expected behavior.

I have built an up-to-date grep (grep 2.7) from the GNU homepage, and this does not have the problematic behavior, so I guess the best solution is to upgrade grep.

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

Upstream fix is here:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=9c45c193825d1f59e1d341e556ecf4adeb7a03a2

author Jim Meyering <email address hidden> 2010-08-13 23:19:16 (GMT)
committer Jim Meyering <email address hidden> 2010-08-13 23:58:39 (GMT)
commit 9c45c193825d1f59e1d341e556ecf4adeb7a03a2 (patch)
tree 45f3d1f2946c96503c5087e36706170ea9684b47
parent 3569576a3304b51491be0a88d4659713d960674f (diff)
download grep-9c45c193825d1f59e1d341e556ecf4adeb7a03a2.tar.gz
make --include=FILE work once again
The semantics of excluded_file_name changed (when operating on
an "included" file name list).
* src/main.c (main): Adjust for changed semantics of excluded_file_name
simply by removing a negation.
* NEWS (Bug fixes): Mention this fix.
* tests/include-exclude: Add a test for this.
Reported by Joe Perches in http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?29876.

[Margarita Manterola (marga-9)]

Hi, this bug was supposedly fixed, but then it was broken again. This is also reported in:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grep/+bug/1003742