Bernhard Voelker <[email protected]> writes:
> On 6/12/26 1:30 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 12/06/2026 01:35, Collin Funk wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I noticed the following inconsistent error message in GNU coreutils:
>>>
>>> $ od -S $'\t'
>>> od: invalid -S argument ' '
>>>
>>> For clarity, would would usually escape that, e.g., like this:
>>>
>>> $ uname $'\t'
>>> uname: extra operand ‘\t’
>>> Try 'uname --help' for more information.
>>>
>>> The cause of this inconsistency is the xstrtol-error module, which does
>>> not use quote().
>>>
>>> I am proposing the attached patch to fix this inconsistency. However,
>>> since it affects other packages, I felt it would be rude to make this
>>> change without asking for approval. Here is the list of affected
>>> packages from the lists in maint-tools.git:
>>>
>>> $ git grep -F 'xstrtol-error' used-modules/
>>> used-modules/coreutils: xstrtol-error
>>> used-modules/datamash: xstrtol-error
>>> used-modules/findutils: xstrtol-error
>>>
>>> I beleive findutils and datamash already use quote() so I think (and
>>> hope) this change is uncontroversial.
>> Thanks for taking the time to audit usage.
>> Given the existing usage, the change looks good I think.
>
> I'm also fine for GNU findutils: there's only one use of xstrol_fatal in
> locate(1).
Thanks both for checking.
I actually see datamash doesn't use xstrtol_{error,fatal}. I guess the
dependency was leftover from some old code that has since been removed.
I went ahead and pushed that patch. Will update coreutils in a bit.
Collin
