bug#24347: Bug when grepping a text file with some arbitrary binary data

[Paul Eggert]

On 09/12/2016 03:16 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
>      Either of the following shell commands should work with grep 2.25:
>      LC_ALL=C grep 31325 test
>      grep -a 31325 test
>
> In my grep 2.25 (compiled from original source), these two commands are
> not equivalent.

They are not equivalent in general, though they should have the same 
behavior with this bug report's original test case. Sorry, I should have 
been clearer about that.

The difference is that grep -a treats the NUL byte as text, whereas 
LC_ALL=C grep treats it as binary. The latter has been longstanding 
behavior for quite some time.