John Red's questions

I want to search for a string of text in all files in a directory (and not its subdirectories; I know the -r option does that, but that is not what I want).

1. Running

   grep "string" /path/to/dir
   

   is supposed to be able to do this, I've read, but it gives me the error:

   grep: dir: Is a directory

2. Next, I tried running grep on multiple files.

   grep "string" .bashrc .bash_aliases works perfectly.

   grep "string" .bash* works as intended too.

   grep "string" * gives me the errors:

   grep: data: Is a directory
   grep: Desktop: Is a directory
   grep: Documents: Is a directory
   grep: Downloads: Is a directory
   ...
   

Only the errors are printed, I don't get the matching lines. I tried using the -s option, but to no avail.

So, my questions:

1. Why am I not being able to use grep on a directory, as in (1), when I should be able to? I've seen that done in plenty examples on the Internet.
   Edit: When I say "using grep on a directory", I mean "search in all the files in that directory excluding its subdirectories". I believe that this is what grep does when you pass a directory to it in place of a file. Am I incorrect?

2. Please give me an explanation on the workings of grep that would explain the behavior of commands in (2).
   Edit: Let me be more specific. Why does using wildcards to specify multiple files to search in for work with .bash* and not with * or even ./*?

3. How can I search all the files in a directory (and not its subdirectories) using grep?

I have a script called start-hotspot-terminal.sh. The text in it is:

#! /bin/bash
x-terminal-emulator -e "sudo /home/user/tools/start-hotspot.sh; read -p 'Press [Enter] to close terminal.';"

There is another script called start-hotspot.sh. The text in it is:

#! /bin/bash
ap-hotspot start

I have done all the necessary things to execute start-hotspot.sh with root privileges without requiring the password. Basically, I read and followed this . So the sudo in the start-hotspot-terminal.sh should not be a problem.
When I simply run sudo /home/user/tools/start-hotspot.sh from the terminal, the hotspot starts without asking me for the password.

But now, when I run the start-hotspot-terminal.sh I am prompted for the password. When I replace the x-terminal-emulator with xterm, there is no problem and the hotspot starts!

Why does this happen? Any way to fix it?

System: Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, Default terminal is gnome-terminal

I want a process to just NOT print its stdout or stderr output.
I know that I can do something like
program >output.txt 2>errors.txt and then rm output.txt errors.txt but its not elegant.
I want that they should not at all be stored anywhere in the first place.
Any idea how to do so?

When I type google-chrome in the terminal it works. xdg-open google-chrome doesn't.
Why is this so? I need to do this so that I can run Chrome without keeping the terminal open, which xdg-open google-chrome allows me to do.