bug#62483: echo a | grep -E -w '((()|a)|())*' # does not terminate

[Jim Meyering]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 6:15 AM Koen Claessen <koen@chalmers.se> wrote:
> Running the command:
>
>   echo a | grep -E -w '((()|a)|())*'
>
> does not terminate, and uses a LOT of processor time, for all versions of
> grep I have tried.
>
> This is the smallest case that could be found; simplifying anything in the
> input and/or expression leads to correct behavior.

Thank you! How did you find that?

FYI, this strikes grep-3.10 (on Fedora 37/glibc-2.36-9.fc37.x86_64)
when using LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8, but not with LC_ALL=C.
I.e., this infloops:
   echo a | LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 grep -E -w '((()|a)|())*'

but this works as expected and promptly prints its line of input:
     echo a | LC_ALL=C grep -E -w '((()|a)|())*'

For now, I've added an expected-failing test case for this bug:

grep-glibc-infloop.patch
Description: Binary data