Re: [Zutils-bug] Version 1.0-rc3 of zutils released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello Dagobert. Thanks for the feedback.

Dagobert Michelsen wrote:
> I just did a test on Solaris 9 Sparc with Sun Studio 12 and got the following 
> issues:
>
> 1. requires inttypes.h instead of stdint.h and requires extra include signal.h
>
> There are due the old OS and probably not worth fixing:

I think so. And in the case of signal.h I think it is a bug in the OS 
because zutils already includes csignal.


> 2. Wrong type on str.insert: should be (char *) NULL instead of 0L
>
> This leads to ambiguous casts either on 32 bit or with 0UL on 64 bit. This can
> easily be corrected with
>   
> http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/gar/browser/csw/mgar/pkg/zutils/trunk/files/0004-Avoid-ambiguity-between-char-and-unsigned-long-on-sp.patch

I think this is also a bug in the OS.

The two declarations involved are (from bits/basic_string.h):
  basic_string& insert(size_type __pos, size_type __n, _CharT __c);
and
  void insert(iterator __p, size_type __n, _CharT __c);


The code in zcat
  str.insert( 0U, 1, '1' );

matches the first declaration (0U is a position in str), while
  str.insert( str.begin(), 1, '1' );

would match the second. But I do not think the proposed patch
  str.insert( (char *) NULL, 1, '1' );

should match either. "(char *) NULL" is neither an integer nor a valid 
iterator.

In fact gcc does not accept the patch unless -fpermissive is used. And 
even so gcc converts it to a position instead of an iterator or a 
pointer. If you need to "fix" it, I recommend you to use str.begin().


> > Zcat, zcmp, zdiff and zgrep are improved replacements for the shell scripts 
> > provided with GNU gzip. Ztest is unique to zutils.
>
> We have been traditionally naming these with uppercase "Z". I remember you were
> talking to the gzip team about adjusting the names to remove the collisions.
> Has this been settled?

Well, it has been settled here[1], as explained in the INSTALL file:

"If you are installing zutils along with GNU gzip and want to keep the 
gzip scripts, the recommended method is to configure gzip as follows:

   ./configure --program-transform-name='s/^z/gz/'

This renames, at installation time, the gzip scripts and man pages to 
'gzcat', 'gzcat.1', etc, avoiding the name clashing with the programs 
and man pages from zutils."

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gzip/2012-01/msg00006.html


Best regards,
Antonio.