Possible bug in grep ?

[raghubs]

Sir,

               We created a file named 'a' (attached) and executed the 
following command

                cat a  |  grep "\n"

                OS just throws dollar prompt.

                We tested the same on various files just to confirm if 
the same thing was happening. To our surprise we found different
                 behavior with different files. With certain files it 
works as expected and with certain other it works as stated above.

                  The command
                                          cat prob.txt | grep -i "\n"

                   throws few lines on the screen.  where as the command

                                           cat prob.txt | grep "\n"

                   throws dollar prompt.  
                   The same happens when we used \r instead of \n

Grep Version : 2.5.1
Linux              : Red Hat 8.0
Kernel            :   2.4.18-14 on an i686
                       

                 
                      
a 
 
 
b



d


e
 

DIRECTOPCODE  : 
SPECIAL       : 
SPECIAL2      : 
COP0          : 

ADDI          : 
ADDIU         : 
SLTI          : 
SLTIU         : 
ORI           : 
XORI          : 
ANDI          : 
LB            : 
LBU           : 
LH            : 
LHU           : 
LW            : 
LWL           : 
LWR           : 
SB            : 
SH            : 
SW            : 
SWR           : 
SWL           : 
LUI           : 

ADD           : 
ADDU          : 
AND           : 
NOR           : 
OR            : 
SLT           : 
SLTU          : 
SUB           : 
SUBU          : 
XOR           : 
DIV           : 
MULT          : 
MULTU         : 
MFHI          : 
MFLO          : 
MTHI          : 
MTLO          : 
SRL           : 
SLL           : 
SRA           : 
SRLV          : 
SLLV          : 
SRAV          : 
SYSCALL       : 

MUL           : 

MTCO          : 
MFCO          : 

BEQ           : 
BNE           : 
BGTZ          : 
BLEZ          : 
J             : 
JAL           : 
JALR          : 
JR            : 
BGEZ          : 
BGEZAL        : 
BGEZALL       : 
BLTZ          : 
BLTZAL        :