Bug 26605 – sed: unexpected memory exhausted error

• Status: RESOLVED CANTFIX
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Sergey Spiridonov 2003-08-14 04:12:41 UTC]

I got an unexpected error "Memory exhausted" 
 
 

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
$ export LANG=C; echo test123test | sed 's/[^[:number:]]//g' 
 
Actual Results:  
sed: -e expression #1, char 18: Memory exhausted 

Expected Results:  
123 
or 
meaningful error message 

$ free 
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached 
Mem:        514640     505352       9288          0     164004     198900 
-/+ buffers/cache:     142448     372192 
Swap:       987988      18320     969668 
 
Portage 2.0.48-r5 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1) 
================================================================= 
System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://highlander/ 
ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/gentoo" 
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config 
/usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config 
/usr/share/config" 
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" 
PORTDIR="/usr/portage" 
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" 
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" 
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" 
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" 
USE="x86 oss 3dnow apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg gnome libg++ 
mad mikmod mmx mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv 
zlib alsa gdbm berkdb slang readline arts tetex svga java X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww 
ssl perl python esd imlib oggvorbis gtk qt kde motif opengl mozilla cdr gtk2" 
COMPILER="gcc3" 
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" 
CFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" 
CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" 
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" 
MAKEOPTS="-j5" 
AUTOCLEAN="yes" 
SYNC="rsync://highlander/gentoo-portage" 
FEATURES="sandbox ccache distcc"

[Comment 1 Tavis Ormandy (RETIRED) 2003-08-14 04:45:17 UTC]

try [[:digit:]]

[Comment 2 Sergey Spiridonov 2003-08-14 05:00:30 UTC]

Anyway, it should produce a meaningful error message

[Comment 3 Nicolas Kaiser 2003-08-14 05:59:09 UTC]

This appears to be a problem with the coreutils implementation of sed.
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/

In comparison, supersed says:

$ export LANG=C; echo test123test | sed 's/[^[:prezel:]]//g' 
sed: -e expression #1, char 18: unknown POSIX class name

Looks more meaningful to me.

[Comment 4 Nicolas Kaiser 2003-08-14 06:27:40 UTC]

Sorry, I was mistaken with coreutils. GNU sed got its own place:
http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/sed.html

Anyway, it's a GNU problem.

[Comment 5 SpanKY 2003-08-14 16:17:49 UTC]

correct, GNU bug, not specific to Gentoo ... 

[Comment 6 Mr. Bones. (RETIRED) 2003-10-02 01:18:39 UTC]

Old bug.