Re: coreutils-6.8 - error in expr

[Bob Proulx]

Vin Shelton wrote:
> I believe I found a bug (or at least a change) in the behavior of expr
> in coreutils-6.8.

Thank you for the report.  However I can't recreate the problem you
describe using coreutils-6.8.  Was this coreutils that you compiled
yourself?  If so on what operating system?

I am actually very suspicious of this being a library problem on your
system relating to regular expression matching.

> Formerly this command:
> 
> expr 20x11-common_process-args : '[[:alnum:]_-]\+$'
> 
> returned the value 25.

Agreed.  That is what I get.

> As of coreutils-6.8, that command returns an error:
> 
> /opt/bin/expr-broken 20x11-common_process-args : '[[:alnum:]_-]\+$'
> /opt/bin/expr-broken: Unmatched [ or [^

I can't recreate that.  First I tried the current version control head
and it worked fine with your test case.  So I pulled the prior 6.8
bundle and compiled it.

  $ wget ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.8.tar.bz2
  $ tar xjf coreutils-6.8.tar.bz2
  $ cd coreutils-6.8
  $ ./configure
  $ make
  $ ./src/expr 20x11-common_process-args : '[[:alnum:]_-]\+$'
  25

Could you try compiling a pristine copy of coreutils and seeing if
that works for you?  If it does not can you report back to the mailing
list here with the results?  Actually, either way we would like to
hear the resolution.

Thanks
Bob