Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!comp.vuw.ac.nz!nickson
From: nickson@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Ray Nickson)
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: globbing bug
Message-ID: <8909040114.AA21411@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 4 Sep 89 01:12:16 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
Lines: 29

The following bug which I reported in version 1.02 does not seem to have
gone away in 1.03.

   From:  Ray Nickson <nickson@COMP.VUW.AC.NZ>
   Date:  Tue, 08 Aug 89 16:20:36 +1200

   There is a bug in glob.c (bash version 1.02, gcc-compiled, on an hp300
   running more/bsd) which causes the following behaviour.  Switch to a
   directory containing only the files A and BC, then do echo *[^C]
   I (usually) get both files listed.  (my understanding is that BC
   shouldn't be listed).

   The problem is (not surprisingly) in the glob_match function in
   glob.c; when matching against *<something>, we try to see how much of
   our text <something> matches, and make * match enough to make this
   work.  So, we first attempt to match [^C] to BC; this fails because
   [^C] must match exactly one character.  Matching [^C] to C fails,
   because it cannot match a C.  But then, we try to match [^C] against
   the null string; the code as written will test the first character of
   the null string ('\0') against each element of the set (i.e. C); it
   won't match, so we claim that "" matches [^C].

   The easiest solution is probably to special-case the null string in
   text being matched against a set, as we do when matching against ?.

-rgn
--
Ray Nickson, Dept. Comp. Sci., Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
nickson@comp.vuw.ac.nz       ...!uunet!vuwcomp!nickson      + 64 4 721000x8593