Re: [PATCH] Avoid bug in Solaris xpg4/sed as used in submodule

Excerpts from Andreas Schwab's message of Mon Apr 09 02:40:03 -0400 2012:

How about using 's|[^/][^/]*|..|g' instead, which should avoid the bug
as well.

I'd be ok with that change if the changed semantics of the regex are
ok in this application.  It's essentially the same as s|[^/]+|..|g,
which requires at least one character.

In the current code, if you do:

echo '/' | sed -e 's|[^]*|..|g'

you get: ../.. (from a working implementation).

Your regex would see the result  be: /

I don't think we'd ever be passing a plain /, but we might pass a
fully qualified path /path/to/foo, which would see the result change
from ../../../.. to /../../.. and that could have unintended impact.

I'd need to look more closely to see if this is a problem in reality.
Others more familiar with this code likely know the answer already.

Thanks
-Ben
--
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302