On Thu Mar 22 20:27:26 2012, sprout wrote:
> On Thu Mar 22 18:50:14 2012, rjbs wrote:
> > Steve, do you have any news on this?
>
> This seems like an appropriate time for me to say why I made it a
> blocker to begin with.
>
> I made it a blocker because it was a patch I couldn’t review, and it
> seemed a shame it was being ignored at the time.
>
> Since then, Steve Hay has pointed out problems with (both iterations of)
> the patch, and the original poster has not come back with a corrected
> version yet.
>
> So, I don’t think it needs to block the release of 5.16.
>
Sorry, I don't have any more news on this really. I was also waiting for
a revised patch from the OP, also with half a mind to take a closer look
myself if that was not forthcoming, but I haven't had a chance yet.
I agree that it shouldn't be a blocker, though. It's not a new
regression, and the crash is only the result of "garbage in" ayway.
The crash arises because the wrong path separator has been used -- ":"
rather than ";". That leads to a string of directory paths not getting
separated, and then the whole string gets a filename appended and is
then passed to -x. And it just so happens that the first directory in
that string is the directory ".", and that character followed by the
wrong path separator character ":" (which should have been ";", of
course) then confuses the code into believing that it's a drive letter
".:" with a letter which it doesn't recognize ("." rather than the more
usual "C", "D", "E", etc).
The following one-liner reproduces the crash:
perl -e "-e '.:'"
as do plenty of other things with garbage where a drive letter was
expected, e.g.
perl -e "-e '1:'"
but it really only arose because of the wrong path separator having been
used in the first place. Perl should handle this better, but I don't see
it as a blocker at all, especially since it isn't new.