[plug] grep hangs

[Jim Householder]

Hi

On a number of occasions I have tried to use grep and had it sit there 
doing nothing.   More likely in an emacs shell than a terminal window.

I am having problems with tv cards and sound, so I thought a quick scan 
of /var (should have specified /var/log, I know) for "/dev/sound" might 
turn up something.

grep started, printed 2 error messages concerning non-existent files, 
and then sat there forever with state S+ - foreground, interruptible 
sleep waiting for an event to complete.

Any ideas what the event might be, and how to tell grep to timeout or 
ignore it?

TIA
Jim