Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcsla.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west From: west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: rcs blows up on suns Message-ID: <967@sdcsla.UUCP> Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 04:01:51 EDT Article-I.D.: sdcsla.967 Posted: Fri Sep 6 04:01:51 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 00:56:08 EDT References: <830@panda.UUCP> <1075@sdcsvax.UUCP> <961@sdcsla.UUCP> Reply-To: west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West) Distribution: net Organization: UC San Diego: Institute for Cognitive Science Lines: 42 Keywords: jumping to conclusions Summary: Oooops... In article <961@sdcsla.UUCP> west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West) writes: >>> RCS blows up on Suns in part because Suns insist that a null pointer be a >>> pointer to a null string; zero pointers won't do. >> >>Is this for real? Does any other system adopt this perverse convention? >I (and others here) have been using RCS on Suns extensively for >years. I've never had any problems with it, and I don't think >anyone else has had anything major go wrong. So I doubt that >the bad RCS code was that distributed by SMI. I was wrong here -- Diana L. Syriac (genrad!panda!dls) sent me an example command sequence that dumps core on Suns: rcs -l foo.c rcs -u foo.c This is indeed a null-pointer problem. The RCS code is clearly incorrect here, in that it assumes a null pointer is okay for "strcmp" or "strcpy". My apologies to Dale Nielsen (genrad!panda!dpn) for assuming he was incorrect in his assessment of the problem, simply because I've never had RCS dump core on me. Similar apologies to the net for adding noise to the net.unix group. As I stated in my original reply, dereferencing zero is always a bad idea, even though it `works' (returns 0) on Vaxen. So, it isn't Sun's fault per se, and I don't think RCS is really a supported product of Sun Microsystems... (anyone from Sun care to comment on this?). Larry -- Larry West (USA+619-)452-6771 Institute for Cognitive Science UC San Diego (mailcode C-015) La Jolla, CA 92093 U.S.A. ARPA: or UUCP: {ucbvax,sdcrdcf,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west or {sun,ulysses}!sdcsla!west