[TUHS] The 'usage: ...' message. (Was: On Bloat...)

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, May 19, 2024, 9:19 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:

> Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The Cornell PL/I compiler, PL/C, ran on the IBM 360 so of course used
> batch
> > input. It tried automatically to keep things running after a parsing
> error
> > by inserting some token - semicolon, parenthesis, whatever seemed best -
> > and continuing to parse, in order to maximize the amount of input that
> > could be parsed before giving up. At least, that's what I took the
> > motivation to be. It rarely succeeded in fixing the actual problem,
> despite
> > PL/I being plastered with semicolons, but it did tend to ferret out more
> > errors per run. I found the tactic helpful.
> >
> > -rob
>
> Gawk used to do this, until people started fuzzing it, causing cascading
> errors and eventually core dumps. Now the first syntax error is fatal.
> It got to the point where I added this text to the manual:
>
>         In recent years, people have been running "fuzzers" to generate
>         invalid awk programs in order to find and report (so-called)
>         bugs in gawk.
>
>         In general, such reports are not of much practical use. The
>         programs they create are not realistic and the bugs found are
>         generally from some kind of memory corruption that is fatal
>         anyway.
>
>         So, if you want to run a fuzzer against gawk and report the
>         results, you may do so, but be aware that such reports don’t
>         carry the same weight as reports of real bugs do.
>
> (Yeah, I've just changed the subject, feel free to stay on topic. :-)
>


Awk bailing out near line 1.

Warner

> Arnold
>
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