Re: Assigning to BASHPID fails silently

[Eduardo A . Bustamante López]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 08:38:29PM +0200, Martijn Dekker wrote:
[...]

The BASHPID variable is initialized with null_assign as its "assign_func". The
default value for this attribute in newly created variables is NULL.

The problem here is caused by the following code from variables.c (function is
bind_variable_internal):

    2753   else if (entry->assign_func)  /* array vars have assign functions 
now */
    2754     {
    2755       INVALIDATE_EXPORTSTR (entry);
    2756       newval = (aflags & ASS_APPEND) ? make_variable_value (entry, 
value, aflags) : value;
    2757       if (assoc_p (entry))
    2758         entry = (*(entry->assign_func)) (entry, newval, -1, savestring 
("0"));
    2759       else if (array_p (entry))
    2760         entry = (*(entry->assign_func)) (entry, newval, 0, 0);
    2761       else
    2762         entry = (*(entry->assign_func)) (entry, newval, -1, 0);
    2763       if (newval != value)
    2764         free (newval);
    2765       return (entry);
    2766     }
    2767   else
    2768     {
    2769 assign_value:
    2770       if ((readonly_p (entry) && (aflags & ASS_FORCE) == 0) || 
noassign_p (entry))
    2771         {
    2772           if (readonly_p (entry))
    2773             err_readonly (name_cell (entry));
    2774           return (entry);
    2775         }
    2776 
    2777       /* Variables which are bound are visible. */
    2778       VUNSETATTR (entry, att_invisible);

If a variable has a non-NULL assign_func, it will not run the readonly_p
(entry) check, and therefore, no error message is printed. I'm not sure why the
code exits, but it seems clear to me that the assign_func should be NULL in
this case.

I attach a patch with the "fix" (disclaimer, I'm not sure this is the proper
fix, that's for Chet to decide).

Patched bash:

    dualbus@yaqui:~/local/src/gnu/bash$ ./bash -c 'BASHPID=1; echo $?'
    ./bash: BASHPID: readonly variable

-- 
Eduardo Bustamante
https://dualbus.me/

init_bashpid.patch
Description: Text document