Revision argument causes no matches to be found

I can reproduce this.
Seems like the 'getattr' is found if we specify the file on the command line but for some reason its missed when we don't do that.

[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr cat -r -1 __init__.py | grep getattr
    if getattr(tree, 'get_revision_id', None) is None:
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r -1 getattr
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r -2 getattr
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r -2 getattr __init__.py
__init__.py~3: if getattr(tree, 'get_revision_id', None) is None:
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r -1 getattr __init__.py
__init__.py~4: if getattr(tree, 'get_revision_id', None) is None:
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r last:1 getattr __init__.py
__init__.py~4: if getattr(tree, 'get_revision_id', None) is None:
[bzr-diff-revid]% bzr grep -r last:1 getattr
[bzr-diff-revid]%

I looked into this some more. It looks format related. After I upgraded the format from 0.92 to 2a it worked fine.

[bzr-diff-revid-2]% bzr grep -r -1 getattr
__init__.py~4: if getattr(tree, 'get_revision_id', None) is None:
[bzr-diff-revid-2]% bzr info
Standalone tree (format: 2a)
Location:
  branch root: .

Related branches:
  parent branch: bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/%2Bbranch/bzr-diff-revid/
[bzr-diff-revid-2]%

I will investigate this further but am lowering the priority to medium. As a workaround please consider upgrading the format to 2a. As a bonus it comes with other goodies like performance and lower memory requirements :-)

I was initially surprised that something so fundamental was broken as we do have tests for this :-)

Ah. FWIW, this bug also occurs on the 1.14 format. Unfortunately we have a large internal project on 1.14 that isn't going to upgrade any time soon from what I can tell.

There is something funny happening here. If I create a standalone repo from scratch the command seems to work fine. I tried this for pack-0.92 and 1.14. Is there something different about your repo. Is it shared? Maybe imported from svn?
I can reproduce this on bzr-diff-revid. The format for bzr-diff-revid is:

Format:
       control: Meta directory format 1
  working tree: Working tree format 6
        branch: Branch format 6
    repository: Packs containing knits without subtree support

The format when I init with pack-0.92 is:

Format:
       control: Meta directory format 1
  working tree: Working tree format 4
        branch: Branch format 6
    repository: Packs containing knits without subtree support

So there is a minor difference in working tree format.

Log of test done with 1.14 and pack-0.92:

[tmp]% bzr init grepfail --format=1.14
Created a standalone tree (format: 1.14)
[tmp]% cd grepfail
[grepfail]% touch abc
[grepfail]% bzr add
adding abc
[grepfail]% echo "hello" > abc
[grepfail]% bzr ci -m "added abc"
Committing to: /home/parthm/tmp/grepfail/
added abc
Committed revision 1.
[grepfail]% echo "world" >> abc
[grepfail]% bzr ci -m "added world"
Committing to: /home/parthm/tmp/grepfail/
modified abc
Committed revision 2.
[grepfail]% bzr grep -r -1 hello
abc~2:hello
[grepfail]% cd ..

[tmp]% bzr init grepfail-92 --format=pack-0.92
Created a standalone tree (format: pack-0.92)
[tmp]% cd grepfail-92
[grepfail-92]% echo hello > abc
[grepfail-92]% bzr add
adding abc
[grepfail-92]% bzr ci -m "added abc"
Committing to: /home/parthm/tmp/grepfail-92/
added abc
Committed revision 1.
[grepfail-92]% echo world >> abc
[grepfail-92]% bzr ci -m "added world"
Committing to: /home/parthm/tmp/grepfail-92/
modified abc
Committed revision 2.
[grepfail-92]% bzr grep -r -1 hello
abc~2:hello
[grepfail-92]%