> Yeah, I realized that, but you can argue the it is isprint() that is 
> really broken.  Either way, most text files are based upon 7 bit 
> characters - especially source code file.

Of course, a file with printer escape codes (just a few, not a bitmap image)
fails the "isbinary" test.  It's a bandaid on top of another bandaid.

> I have been trying to crash grep
> (rgrep, without the -a argument) on large binary files, and I can't do it. 

How much memory do you have?  The crash is that grep runs out of memory.
I find that the 2.7b2 Mosaic binary runs grep out of memory on my (16MB)
system.

> Maybe I am just lucky, or maybe grep isn't as broken as people think.

Aside from the usual GNU arrogance about infinite virtual memory, grep
isn't broken.  With luck, we can keep bizarro pointless flags out of grep
so that the text segment will at least load on tiny systems like mine...