Re: address@hidden: grep-tree doesn't shell-quote-argument]

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Kim F. Storm)
> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:59:44 +0200
> Cc: Eric Hanchrow <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> 
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> > Btw, isn't it confusing that we have no less than 3 different
> > commands (find-grep-dired, grep-find, and grep-tree) to do
> > the same job?
> 
> Why?

Because it is hard to remember which one does what, unless you use
them every day.  I only use them once in several months, and I always
have to read the documentation to remember which one I need for the
particular job at hand.

> Have you actually looked at them and what they do?

Well, I have, and I trust that Lennart did as well.

> Like grep-find, grep-tree recurses directories listing matching lines,
> but the interface it completely different, as grep-tree prompts
> individually for regexp, files, and starting directory (with normal
> directory name completion).  It also remembers your previous choice
> for each parameter, so you can quickly repeat a previous search
> starting in a different directory.

Don't you see how these are equivalent?

> IMO, grep-tree is much more user
> friendly than grep and grep-find (I use grep-tree all the time), 
> while others obviously prefer the power of grep and grep-find.

Then making one a variant of the other should save us from having to
remember another command name.

> find-grep-dired is completely different in the sense that it
> doesn't list the matches, but rather presents a dired buffer
> which lists the files which matches the regexp.

It's not ``completely different'', because in most situations the user
wants to visit the matching files.  The only real reason to prefer
find-grep-dired to the others is when you want to invoke Dired
commands on the matching files.

> I don't see any way to merge them

The normal Emacs way: use the prefix argument.

> ...or how doing so can "save a lot of time for many people".

For me, that time is wasted on reading the doc strings of the
commands.