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From: eggert@sm.unisys.com (Paul Eggert)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: 'sed -e' dumps core
Message-ID: <sgV0X5D@sea.sm.unisys.com>
Date: 5 Sep 88 17:42:08 GMT
References: <352@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: eggert@sm.unisys.com (Paul Eggert)
Organization: Unisys Santa Monica
Lines: 19

Richard A. O'Keefe writes that "sed -e" dumps core in older SunOS releases, but
not on SunOS 4.0RRBeta2 on a 386i.  This prompts me to dig out the following
bug report for SunOS 4.0 on a Sun-3/60 (Sun bug ID 1012595):

sed: "-e '' file" and "-f /dev/null file" treat the file name as a command
	When sed is given an empty script with the -e or -f flag, it gets
	confused and tries to grab the next argument as a command.
	The following script illustrates the problem.  All three commands
	should do nothing, but only the first one works correctly.

		% sed '' /dev/null
		% sed -e '' /dev/null
		sed: Extra text at end of command: /dev/null
		% sed -f /dev/null /dev/null
		sed: Extra text at end of command: /dev/null

This new bug does not exist under SunOS 3.5 on the same machine; 3.5 exhibited
the old core dumping bug.  So if you're fixing the "'sed -e' dumps core" bug,
please check that you do not introduce this new bug, like Sun did.