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I use the standard grep command a lot. When I execute it, the minibuffer is populated with the following the text, allowing me to complete the command:

Run grep (like this): grep --color -nH --null -e 

I almost always prefer to use Perl regex and ignore casing, so I'm finding myself replacing the last argument very often like so:

Run grep (like this): grep --color -nH --null -Pi 

I would like to change the behavior of grep so that it loads with the argument -Pi instead of -e by default.

When I use describe-function and inspect grep, I can see the lines (in /usr/share/emacs/26.3/lisp/progmodes/grep.el.gz) that define this behavior. Beginning line 650, there is a codeblock like so:

      (let ((grep-options
         (concat (if grep-use-null-device "-n" "-nH")
                     (if grep-use-null-filename-separator " --null")
             (if (grep-probe grep-program
                     `(nil nil nil "-e" "foo" ,null-device)
                     nil 1)
             " -e"))))
       (...

How do I override these grep-options in my Emacs config? I cannot find a variable named grep-probe or grep-options which I could just overwrite, for example, so what's the best practice then?

1 Answer 1

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The needed variable to set is called grep-command, resulting in (setq grep-command "grep --color -nH --null -Pi")

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