[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#807836: Bug#807836: builtin unlimit leads to "xargs: invalid number for -s"

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Thilo,

Thilo Six wrote:
> in https://bugs.debian.org/807836 it was discovered that the Zsh builtin
> "unlimit" has potential unforeseen side-effects.
> 
> An easy to reproduce case for the problem is documented in
> https://bugs.debian.org/807836#30

That example is IMHO a wrong usage of awk then. If the consuming
script isn't capable of parsing scientific notation but uses a tool
which produces scientific notation if needed, that's for sure not
zsh's fault.

> The problem here is that unlimit sets the maximum input size to s.th. that is by
> far out of the feasibility of the hardware being used.

So what. Bash does similar things:

$ ulimit -v -m
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited

I'm sure even with swap, there's no unlimited virtual memory available
on my machine.

> This results in breakage of programs that reuse that capability for their own
> processing.

So while it could be a bug that such big values are output despite
they should be smaller, as you say, it doesn't need to be a bug.

> I contact you to ask if that Zsh behaviour of "unlimit" is actually by design or
> if this is a bug which should be fixed.

We'll check with upstream.

> If the former i ask if the documentation of the "unlimit" builtin can be
> extended to inform users that the usage of "unlimit" has potential unforeseen
> side-effects which might break valid code.

I'm sorry, but if code is broken by too big integer values or
unexpected by used scientific notation, it's not valid code but broken
code.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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