Re: [octave forge] (generate_html) fprinf failure during html generation

[Mike Miller]

On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 23:45:49 +0200, JuanPi wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am preparing the release of matgeom and geomtry and when I am trying
> to generate the html for matgeom I get
> 
> > pkg load generate_html
> > generate_package_html ("matgeom", "OF/matgeom-html", "octave-forge");
> error: fprintf: invalid format specified

In the context of printf-style functions, the term "invalid format"
usually means that an unescaped percent character is part of the
template string. Typically, this means the printf function is called
incorrectly with unsafe input, for example

    printf (my_string);

instead of

    printf ("%s", my_string);

So this is a bug in the generate_html package, when the first help
sentence of a function contains a literal '%' character.

A simple test case would be

    ## -*- texinfo -*-
    ## @deftypefn {} {} myfunc
    ## This function is 10% ready.
    ## @end deftypefn
    function myfunc ()
    endfunction

I can reproduce the exact error with a trivial package containing this
function.

So actions to move forward from here

1. file or fix the bug in generate_package_html
2. see if it's easy to avoid using '%' in function doc strings

I notice that matgeom in particular uses Matlab-style help blocks, and
typically does not end the first line with a period. So you may find
that none of the first lines of all doc strings have a percent, but
Octave will read multiple lines until it sees a period. Look at

    get_first_help_sentence ('circle3dPoint', 200)

for an example from your package that returns much more than a summary
sentence, and includes a '%' character that triggers this error.

-- 
mike

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature