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grep
Raised as a usability problem by 23 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 22 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Chaining grep filters loses filenames and context linesUnreviewed
20122026- Grep can't trace calls to common interface method names like Write or String2024-09-03
- Chaining grep filters loses filenames and context lines in the output2022-04-13
- Forgetting the filename makes grep silently wait on standard input2020-11-06
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 21 complaints
- Color codes make piped grep output mismatch on rerun, confusing debugging2026-02-07
- Common operations need long, hard-to-remember gibberish commands or many aliases2025-10-13
- Unicode matching in grep needs LANG experimentation and varies across systems2025-04-11
- Grep can't trace calls to common interface method names like Write or String2024-09-03
- Must grep each log file separately and piece results together2024-04-02
- Inconsistent regex syntax across tools makes it hard to remember which to use2023-12-30
- Signing up with an anonymous email gives a vague 'Something went wrong' error2023-04-11
- Magic link login forces bouncing between email client and search engine2023-04-11
- Chaining grep filters loses filenames and context lines in the output2022-04-13
- Name is an obscure in-joke, so users can't guess it when searching for regex tools2022-01-03
- Forgetting the filename makes grep silently wait on standard input2020-11-06
- Can't remember which flag is needed for regex syntax, and BSD and GNU differ2019-09-12
- The -f flag's meaning is confusing because it reads patterns rather than naming the file to search2019-04-12
- Command-line grep workflow forces slow repeated context switching between tools2018-09-11
- Coloured blocks make it harder to read and take in the whole screen2018-06-06
- Must restart search with -C to see lines around matches2017-09-04
- Shows only "Binary file matches" instead of the matching lines, hiding the results2017-06-17
- Ignore file behaviour is confusing; each tool needs its own separate ignore file2016-09-24
- -v means invert match, which is non-intuitive; single-letter flags are reused inconsistently across tools2016-03-30
- Nested modules and aliases make constructors hard to find with grep2015-04-25
- Useful grep features must be remembered and memorized, since defaults are not sensible2012-11-28