Re: sanity failure

[Larry Jones]

Paul Edwards writes [quoting Derek]:
> >
> > Did it tell you why it thought expr was broken?
> 
> Not sure what you mean.  It said that I should make a GNU
> expr available if I didn't want the spurious passing (not
> failing) of tests.

The warning message usually includes some indication of what the problem
is, such as not handling multiple lines or long lines.

> Anyway, I tried sticking /usr/xpg4/bin at the front of my PATH
> today, and got rid of the ID and EXPR variables, but it didn't
> make any difference.  I still got a spurious fail when I was
> promised spurious passing.  :-)

Spurious passing is by far the more serious problem since you'll think
everything is fine if all the tests pass and that may not be true. 
That's why we explicitly warn about it.  Failures have to be
investigated whether they're spurious or not.  :-)

-Larry Jones

I don't think that question was very hypothetical at all. -- Calvin