Topic: grep

• grep, diff, cmp and test/[: exit code 1 means not-found, not failure

  grep, diff, cmp and the test/[ builtin all use the same three-way scale: 0 for a positive result, 1 for a negative result that is not an error, and 2 (or >1) for real trouble. Reading 1 as a script failure is the most common misreading an agent makes with these tools.

  article · en · reviewed · knowledge as of 2026-09-25

Machine-readable: JSON