recursive script not working

Question

I am trying to add recursive support to my filegrep script.

For some reason this does not work as expected:

RECURSIVE_MODE=off

# iterate over args
for ARG in "$@"
do
    if [ -d "$ARG" ] && [ $RECURSIVE_MODE = on ] ; then
        # recursive call
        $0 $GREP_ARGS $ARG/*
    elif [ -f "$ARG" ]; then
        filecat "$ARG" | grep $GREP_ARGS | sed "s#^#$ARG: #"
    else
        [ "$ARG" = "-r" ] && RECURSIVE_MODE=on
        # append to the current grep args
        GREP_ARGS="$GREP_ARGS $ARG"
    fi
done

I'd like to avoid using functions in this case for better readability.

EDIT: the script should work like this:

for each passed arg:

• if the current arg is a directory, check if recursive mode is enabled and if yes do the recursive call;
• else if the current arg is a file, call grep with the current pattern;
• else assume the current arg is a grep pattern or a grep switch and append it to the current $GREP_ARGS list.

Maybe this is not completely reliable, but it works fine for me as a replacement for zgrep, pdfgrep, etc.

Answer 1

Try using the -H option to grep:

   -H, --with-filename
          Print the filename for each match.

So instead of calling your script, just do:

grep -H PATTERN [FILE...]

Also, it's a good idea to check the man page for the tool you are using before you attempt writing a wrapper script. For common Unix tool, the simple options you want are nearly always built into the tool already.

Answer 2

I've finally found the problem was that grep with the -r switch ignores stdin and search in the current working directory instead. To force stdin reading, i've just added a -:

filecat "$ARG" | grep $GREP_ARGS - | sed "s#^#$ARG: #"