[Bug 1547466] Re: grep switches into binary mode while processing a text file

[Martin Pitt]

** Description changed:

- I noticed this starting to happen in Xenial about two days ago. When
+ I noticed this staring to happen in Xenial about two days ago. When
  running sbuild (or now the buildd, too), the build breaks when trying to
  compile a generated file. I traced the problem down to grep suddenly
  acting weird. When not having any language set (or a non-UTF8 mode) it
  will start printing some lines of a source file and then suddenly end
  that by printing "Binary file ... matches".
  
  With the attached file, the difference can be observed (running Xenial):
  
  LANG=C grep -v xxx grant_table.h
  
  and
  
  LANG=C.UTF-8 grep -v xxx grant_table.h
  
- Upstream bug: http://bugs.gnu.org/23234
+ SRU INFORMATION
+ ===============
+ Upstream fixes:
+  - http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=d8a366218 (but depends on previous patches and is not sufficient by itself)
+  - http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=d8a366218 (tests+doc)
+ 
+ Test case:
+ 
+ Call grep on a file or a string with non-ASCII characters in the C locale:
+     $ echo 'héll☺ ≥x' | LC_ALL=C grep . 
+ In xenial this just shows "Binary file (standard input) matches", with the fix it should show the actual input string (with some garbled output of course as the UTF-8 chars cannot be displayed in C)
+ 
+ Regression potential: grep is being used in tons of places; during
+ xenial we had to fix/put a "use grep -a" workaround into a lot of
+ packages to fix the fallout from grep 2.23 which introduced this. That
+ said, as a result of "Binary file matches" does not give any more
+ information than the actual string match, and scripts which get along
+ with this answer most likely just check the exit code anyway (which does
+ not change), the risk is bearable.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1547466

Title:
  grep switches into binary mode while processing a text file

Status in grep package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in grep source package in Xenial:
  In Progress
Status in grep source package in Yakkety:
  Fix Released
Status in grep package in Debian:
  Unknown

Bug description:
  I noticed this staring to happen in Xenial about two days ago. When
  running sbuild (or now the buildd, too), the build breaks when trying
  to compile a generated file. I traced the problem down to grep
  suddenly acting weird. When not having any language set (or a non-UTF8
  mode) it will start printing some lines of a source file and then
  suddenly end that by printing "Binary file ... matches".

  With the attached file, the difference can be observed (running
  Xenial):

  LANG=C grep -v xxx grant_table.h

  and

  LANG=C.UTF-8 grep -v xxx grant_table.h

  SRU INFORMATION
  ===============
  Upstream fixes:
   - http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=d8a366218 (but depends on previous patches and is not sufficient by itself)
   - http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/commit/?id=d8a366218 (tests+doc)

  Test case:

  Call grep on a file or a string with non-ASCII characters in the C locale:
      $ echo 'héll☺ ≥x' | LC_ALL=C grep . 
  In xenial this just shows "Binary file (standard input) matches", with the fix it should show the actual input string (with some garbled output of course as the UTF-8 chars cannot be displayed in C)

  Regression potential: grep is being used in tons of places; during
  xenial we had to fix/put a "use grep -a" workaround into a lot of
  packages to fix the fallout from grep 2.23 which introduced this. That
  said, as a result of "Binary file matches" does not give any more
  information than the actual string match, and scripts which get along
  with this answer most likely just check the exit code anyway (which
  does not change), the risk is bearable.

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