[lmi] Can wx_test say "acdgimprsxcciim"?

[Greg Chicares]

An odd thing happened to me today. I started rebuilding wx from
scratch, and it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to
run 'wx_test' one last time before upgrading wx--so I ran it
right after I started the wx rebuild, while wx was still running
its 'configure' step.

All 24 tests failed. The font changed in the separate zsh session
where I was running 'wx_test'. And "acdgimprsxcciim%" appeared in
that zsh session. The "%" was highlighted, indicating the absence
of a newline. But where did "acdgimprsxcciim" come from? Could
that be simulated keyboard events from 'wx_test'? I can't explain
the alphabetical "a" to "x" part, but "cciim" looks suspiciously
like census-census-illustration-illustration-mec_testing.

Furthermore, my firewall told me that 'basename' wanted to
execute 'cc1'. I can understand why wx configuration would use
both, but I don't see why 'basename' would invoke an "internal"
part of gcc. I allowed it, and wx seems to have built correctly.
But the firewall never previously prompted me to allow this.

Do we know of any plausible way this could happen, or is it just
a freakish anomaly? I've never seen anything like it before.