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From: "zackw at panix dot com" <sourceware-bugzilla@sourceware.org> To: glibc-bugs@sourceware.org Subject: [Bug libc/18681] New: regexp.h is obsolete and buggy, and should be desupported Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 13:13:00 -0000 [thread overview] Message-ID: <bug-18681-131@http.sourceware.org/bugzilla/> (raw) https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18681 Bug ID: 18681 Summary: regexp.h is obsolete and buggy, and should be desupported Product: glibc Version: unspecified Status: NEW Severity: normal Priority: P2 Component: libc Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org Reporter: zackw at panix dot com CC: drepper.fsp at gmail dot com Target Milestone: --- <regexp.h> (not to be confused with <regex.h>) is an obsolete and frankly horrible regular expression-matching API. It was part of SVID but was withdrawn in Issue 5 (for reference, we're on Issue 7 now). It doesn't do anything you can't do with <regex.h>, and using it involves defining a bunch of macros before including the header. Moreover, the code in regexp.h that uses those macros has been buggy since its creation (in 1996) and no one has noticed, which indicates to me that there are no users. There are two bugs: (1) It often invokes RETURN in error situations. For example, it maps REG_EBRACE to RETURN(44). That should be ERROR(44) instead. (2) If it succeeds, it invokes RETURN with a pointer that points outside the buffer provided by the caller. It should have placed the compiled regexp object at the beginning of the buffer and given to RETURN a pointer just beyond the end of the object. This means the caller cannot deallocate the compiled regular expression. (1) would be easy to fix, but (2) would require nontrivial surgery on the core regular expression compiler. Therefore I think that this API should just be removed. [ I discovered this independently, but it was reported to Debian in 2009 as https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=517625 and I have borrowed some of this text from there.] -- You are receiving this mail because: You are on the CC list for the bug.
next reply other threads:[~2015-07-15 13:13 UTC|newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top 2015-07-15 13:13 zackw at panix dot com [this message] 2015-07-15 13:57 ` [Bug libc/18681] " zackw at panix dot com 2015-07-15 13:58 ` zackw at panix dot com 2015-07-15 13:58 ` zackw at panix dot com 2015-08-16 15:37 ` cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org 2015-08-18 13:29 ` vapier at gentoo dot org 2015-08-18 13:29 ` cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org 2015-10-29 16:37 ` jsm28 at gcc dot gnu.org
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