How to grep a text file which contains some binary data?

Question

grep returns

Binary file test.log matches

For example

echo    \"line1 re \\x00\\r\\nline2\\r\\nline3 re\\r\\n\" > test.log  # in zsh         


        

Answer 1

You could run the data file through cat -v, e.g

$ cat -v tmp/test.log | grep re
line1 re ^@^M
line3 re^M

which could be then further post-processed to remove the junk; this is most analogous to your query about using tr for the task.