View source for grep/file masks

==About==
If ''file'' is specified using wildcards (e.g. {{fmt/code|*.log}} or {{fmt/code|*}}), [[bash]] (the default command-line parser) [[bash/globbing|expands this into a listing of all matching files]] before passing it to grep. This interferes with [[grep]]'s ability to search multiple files. It can be overridden with quotes or escapes, but grep does not seem to have any wildcard-processing ability of its own (though grep ''must'' do some when it's doing recursion; to be investigated) -- so any wildcards passed through ''without'' expansion are seen by grep as names of files that don't exist.

'''Example''': {{fmt/code|grep -r [text_to_find] *.log}} will not (in most contexts, including those where it's most likely to be used e.g. searching inside {{fmt/code|/var/log}}, because it will skip folders that don't ''also'' match the filemask -- i.e. it will only search in folders that end in {{fmt/code|.log}}.

'''Example''': If the file-mask finds too many matches in the current folder, it can generate the error {{fmt/quote|bash: /bin/grep: Argument list too long}} -- even if the number of files ''with matching contents'' is zero or quite short. (In one case where I ran into this problem, the directory contained 5014 files.)

In short, grep does not have the ability to search recursively using a file-mask, and any mask entered:
* will prevent grep from recursively searching any folders whose names do not also match (so, typically will only apply to the current/top folder)
* may prevent grep from being able to work at all if too many files in the top folder have names that match the wildcard pattern

See [[bash/globbing]] for more discussion.
==Links==
* '''2020-02-04''' [https://toot.cat/@woozle/103602468124365262 #softwareGripe #grep #counterintuitive]