sdiff "subsidiary program `%s' failed" [diffutils 2.8.4-r1]

[D. Wollmann]

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distribution: diffutils 2.8.4-r1
platform: Gentoo GNU/Linux 1.4_rc1

bug description:

sdiff always prints an error message: "subsidiary program `?' failed"
(where ? is the editor pathname set in the EDITOR shell variable) and returns 
non-zero exit status.

At sdiff.c:704 there is a call to waitpid after calling pclose on a diff 
process forked with popen, which probably returns ECHILD. As I read the 
documentation, pclose waits for the child and a wait4 call on the child pid 
after a pclose will return an error indicator.

The following patch "works here", but as I am not a real C hacker, it should 
be examined more carefully before use.

- --- sdiff.c.orig        2002-06-17 00:55:42.000000000 -0500                   
                                
+++ sdiff.c     2003-01-08 03:04:02.000000000 -0600                             
                              
@@ -692,7 +692,7 @@                                                             
                                     
ck_fclose (out);                                                                
                                                                                
                                                            
{                                                                               
                       
- -       int wstatus;                                                          
                                
+       int wstatus = 0;                                                        
                                      
int werrno = 0;                                                                 
                                                                                
                                                     
#if ! (HAVE_WORKING_FORK || HAVE_WORKING_VFORK)                                 
                             
@@ -701,11 +701,6 @@                                                            
                                        
werrno = errno;                                                                 
                     
#else                                                                           
                                     
ck_fclose (diffout);                                                            
                      
- -       while (waitpid (diffpid, &wstatus, 0) < 0)                            
                                
- -         if (errno == EINTR)                                                 
                                
- -           checksigs ();                                                     
                                
- -         else                                                                
                                
- -           perror_fatal ("waitpid");                                         
                                        
diffpid = 0;                                                                    
                       
#endif

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