Re: make check fails because of username length

[Jim Meyering]

Thank you for that analysis and report!
I've done as you suggest.

Ferdinand <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Using coreutils-4.5.4 I came across a FAIL in make check:
> The cp test "same-file" failed, with diff showing that foo, hardlink,
> sl1, sl2 etc. all had one space character prefixed to them in the
> $actual file. Example:
> 0 --rem ( foo  hardlink)  vs.
> 0 --rem (foo hardlink)    and
> 0 -bdf ( foo  sl1 -> foo  sl2 -> foo  sl2~ -> foo)  vs.
> 0 -bdf (foo sl1 -> foo sl2 -> foo sl2~ -> foo)
>
> However, when I ran make check as root, no FAILs were reported. When I
> checked the $actual file, the spaces weren't there.
> After some testing, I noticed that this was due to the way filenames are
> extracted from the ls -lG command, which makes assumptions about
> username length. Since my username is 9 characters long, this error
> showed up. The mv test part-symlink has the same problem.
>
> Maybe one can reasonably assume that usernames are less than 9
> characters long; if not, the following suggestion solves the issue:
> Run ls with -lGg, thereby removing the username from the output, and
> adapt the amount of stripped characters accordingly (delete 9 dots).
>
> Ferdinand