[Bug 11626] New: Recursive grep hangs when encountering a named pipe

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=11626

            Bug ID: 11626
           Summary: Recursive grep hangs when encountering a named pipe
           Product: Busybox
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: All
                OS: Other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P5
         Component: Other
          Assignee: unassigned at busybox.net
          Reporter: whitedavidp at yahoo.com
                CC: busybox-cvs at busybox.net
  Target Milestone: ---

I am using BB 1.29.2 on Android and recently encountered a situation when a
recursive grep command was hanging. I discovered that in the folder/file tree
being recursed there were several files which ls -l shows having a file type of
"p", named pipe.

I can understand why this might cause a problem. But it seems that it might be
a good idea for grep to check the file type and not even attempt to
open/process such files. One would think that this would at least create a file
open/read error given that there is the -s option for suppressing output of
this nature. But all I get is a hung grep that must be manually killed.

I know how to avoid this using something like this:

     find . -type f -exec grep pattern {}

But this seems far less efficient than having grep the files it intends to try
and open.

Thanks very much!

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