Re: grep-3.3.42-088f test results on AIX

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

> I'm thinking we should install the attached patch into Gnulib. The basic idea 
> is
> that running these test scripts in random locales is likely more trouble than
> it's worth.

No no no. Applied to grep's init.sh, it would reduce the test coverage of
grep. But applied to gnulib's init.sh, it would reduce the test coverage of
gettext, libunistring, coreutils, findutils, gzip, and many other packages.
I *vehemently* object against that.

> the patch to grep that you
> proposed wouldn't suffice, because the test scripts have several other uses of
> printf with octal escapes outside of ASCII range, and they'd all have to be
> changed.

Yeah, sure. But we have learned to write "LC_ALL=C tr ..." instead of "tr ...".
We can also learn to write "LC_ALL=C printf ..." instead of "printf ...".

Alternatively, you may define printf as a shell function in init.cfg.

> Also, I worry that for platforms where printf is a builtin, "LC_ALL=C printf
> '\202'" won't work as POSIX requires because historically setting environment
> variables has been buggy for shell builtins.

On the AIX 7.2 /bin/sh, I verified that 'LC_ALL=C printf ...' works,
On the other shells, printf of octals is known to be locale independent,
therefore it doesn't matter whether the LC_ALL=C assignment has an effect
on the printf command or not.

> which cwould seem to require that the shell itself, not merely the printf
> command, be in a locale that is compatible with the byte sequence in question.

If that is the case - which I doubt, because why would backquote expansion
or other things a shell does work differently in an UTF-8 locale -, the fix
would be to let init.sh respawn with a different shell. The respawning condition
in init.sh lines 159..175 could be extended to include printf '\351'.
I've verified that the attached patch fixes the two reported tests from the
'grep' test suite.

Should I push that?

Bruno

0001-test-framework-sh-Avoid-bin-sh-on-AIX-7.2-due-to-its.patch
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