[cschramm]

I've always used -r before, since it saves a key press. ;)

But I started using -R today, in the middle of a WTF event while inspecting some Python files, digging up a Debian bug report, inspecting the upstream change and posting this to HN.

I still think it's not the best idea for Debian (or any other system) to break compatibility with upstream, since this will lead to different behaviors on different systems, not only depending on version and vendor (GNU or *BSD). But of course, it could also lead to the change being reverted, which would be welcome (guess nobody relies on the new behavior yet).

The POSIX argument is definitely valid, but nevertheless GNU's grep has always supported -r and BSD versions do as well (although OpenBSD's man page reads "This implementation supports those options; however, their use is strongly discouraged."), so it just unnecessarily breaks existing stuff.