RE: [h-e-w] emacs grep on Windows

[Drew Adams]

I use igrep, but it seems to be broken on Windows with emacs 23.  I'd like to
switch to grep. 
        
The manual says: 
 If you specify a prefix argument for M-x grep, it finds the tag ... 
        
There's no sample code for how to actually set the prefix argument.  I 
know I can type C-u every time, but how do I assign it to a key
(global-set-key)? 

C-u is a key. ;-)

Many commands that change their behavior based on a prefix arg use the prefix
arg as one of their arguments.  E.g.:

(defun foo (arg)
  (interactive "P)
  ;; Do something according to the value of ARG,
  ;; which is the same as variable `current-prefix-arg'.
  )

If that is the case, and you want a command that _always_ performs `foo' as if
you had used `C-u' interactively, you can write a command that does that:

(defun my-foo ()
  (interactive)
  (foo arg))

In some cases it is a bit more involved than that.  For example, `foo' might do
things differently depending on whether it is called interactively or from Lisp.

More germane to your question, `foo' (`grep' in this case) might not provide any
argument that corresponds one-to-one with the `current-prefix-arg'.  You need to
look at the source code for the command to see how it works interactively.

In the case of `grep', you can do this to get what you want:

(defun my-grep ()
  "..."
  (interactive)
  (let ((current-prefix-arg  t))
    (call-interactively #'grep)))

HTH.

You might also be interested in the version of Emacs `grep'     provided by
library `grep+.el'.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GrepPlus
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/grep%2b.el