Not true. This is grep's default behavior. From https://linux.die.net/man/1/grep https://linux.die.net/man/1/grep: > Normally, the exit status is 0 if selected

Not true. This is grep's default behavior. From https://linux.die.net/man/1/grep https://linux.die.net/man/1/grep: > Normally, the exit status is 0 if selected lines are found and 1 otherwise. $ touch bar $ grep foo bar $ echo $? 1