[self-follow-up] At 2023-03-06T09:56:37-0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2023-03-06T01:56:56+0100, Bruno Haible wrote: > > On FreeBSD 13.1, the build succeeds, but there is 1 test failure: > > > > FAIL: contrib/gdiffmk/tests/runtests.sh > > > > Find attached the log. Apparently non-numeric arguments get passed > > to the 'expr' program.
As noted earlier, gdiffmk does this on purpose to implement its option parser. > FreeBSD expr is rejecting arguments that are structured like options, > but which it doesn't recognize, instead of interpreting them as > literals. Presumably this is why they keep flogging their '-e' flag > in their diagnostics. I'll look at POSIX for guidance. As far as I can tell there's nothing wrong gdiffmk using expr this way. POSIX Issue 4 does not admit any options to the "expr" command, and neither do Issues 6 or 7. (I didn't bother to check Issue 5.) https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/expr.html Rather than refactor gdiffmk this close to a release, I think I would prefer to don my Ralph Corderoy mask and accuse FreeBSD of deviationism. ...and to document this as a known issue in the "PROBLEMS" file. I do see a lengthy apologium for this behavior in FreeBSD's man page ("Compatibility with previous implementations"). https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=expr&sektion=1 So maybe the right thing to do is have gdiffmk prepend "--" to the expr argument list when using it to process its own arguments. FreeBSD's man page is somewhat strident that expr is obsolete and should be replaced with shell built-in commands. (At least when it comes to arithmetic, but what gdiffmk wants here is not arithmetic.) I'd be more receptive to that advice if I had not seen some evidence that, and read more regarding, the shell's behavior being just about the _least_ reliable of anything to be found on a purportedly POSIX system. > (Also, exiting with a status > 125 from a shell script is a bad idea; > POSIX also talks about this. But it's a separate issue.) I reckon I'll fry these fish together, some time after release. Regards, Branden
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