Re: m4 changequote bug

[Eric Blake]

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[please keep replies on the list, and adding bug-gdb]

According to Josef Vukovic on 11/23/2009 5:37 AM:
> 
> 
> 2009/11/19 Eric Blake <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>>
> 
> 
>     I'm not sure when that was fixed, but I confirmed that even as far
>     back as
>     1.4.4 does not have that behavior.  Are you sure that was a real bug at
>     some point?  And, if I may ask, why do you care?  Anything older than
>     1.4.6 is not really usable with autoconf.
> 
> 
> 
> The reason why I care is simple. I treid doning the example in "Debugging
> with GDB" and in the chapter "A simple GDB session" there is used a old m4
> Version with the Bug.
> So I thought if I can find such an old version I can copy the bugy code and
> enable users of m4 to switch on a bugy m4 version for the GDB tutorial.
> (like $:gdb -m4 --bugy)

Yuck.  I do NOT want to _intentionally_ expose a memory corruption, even
if it is by an undocumented option such as m4 ---buggy (the three dashes
is not a typo; I prefer that all undocumented options have three dashes,
so as not to interfere with long option abbreviations).  That is just
asking for exploitation problems.  It would be MUCH better for gdb to
update their manual with either a toy program, or something more modern
(as that particular m4 bug was fixed prior to m4 1.4, which was released
more than 15 years ago).

> 
> See this link:
> http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Sample-Session.html#Sample-Session
> 

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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