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

[Jim Meyering]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 3:32 AM Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 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?

Thanks, Bruno. I too prefer to make init.sh eliminate that shell.

Here's a slightly tighter test, albeit relying on tr working with octals:

  case `LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 printf '\351'| tr '\351' x` in x) ;; *) exit 1;; esac

If you stick with od, please ensure that its output is precisely that
one "e9" byte, e.g., via

  case $(LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 printf '\351'|od -An -tx1|tr -d ' ') in e9) ...

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+ https://lists.gnu.org/r/grep-devel/2019-12/msg00020.html