Re: [PATCH] doc: document mbrtowc and mbrlen problem with empty input

[Paul Eggert]

On 05/16/2014 11:13 AM, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Thanks for tracking that down. This sounds like it will deserve 
> compile/run tests so that gnulib-using projects will detect the bug 
> and use the replacement functions. 

Thanks, good idea.

gnulib/tests/test-mbrtowc.c has test cases for zero-length input that 
explicitly allow mbrtowc to return 0 (glibc behavior) or (size_t) -1 
(AIX 5.1 behavior).  My guess is that Bruno didn't get around to 
installing a fix for these bugs, perhaps because he didn't think it 
important enough.  But this 'grep' failure has given me motivation to 
fix it, so I plan to do that soon in gnulib.

I won't install any change to grep for this right now, as we're close to 
a release and the existing grep code should be correct (albeit perhaps a 
bit slower) regardless of whether gnulib is fixed.