Re: sed bug report - Segfault on L command with long address

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 10/12/2014 18:25, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Thank you for that report.
> I confirm it can still be triggered with the latest from git,
> though with that, I had to add another "2" digit to your
> reproducer.
> 
> Since the "L" command is GNU-sed-specific, and
> documented to be a failed experiment (copying fmt.c
> from coreutils' src/fmt.c back in 2002), I am strongly
> inclined simply to remove that code, and have already
> written the patch, just to see how much work it would
> take.  I haven't yet written the NEWS entry.
> 
> Here's its description from "info sed":
> 
> 'L N'
>      This GNU 'sed' extension fills and joins lines in pattern space to
>      produce output lines of (at most) N characters, like 'fmt' does; if
>      N is omitted, the default as specified on the command line is used.
>      This command is considered a failed experiment and unless there is
>      enough request (which seems unlikely) will be removed in future
>      versions.
> 
> At worst, I'll change it to emit a deprecation warning
> upon first use of "L" for the next release, and remove
> support altogether in the following one.
> 
> Does anyone know of distro-provided scripts
> that rely on GNU sed's "L" command?

Just kill it...

Paolo