Subject: bug#34525: replace-regexp missing some matches

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2019 13:50:48 +0000

Hello, Eli.

On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 22:11:57 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2019 21:00:58 +0000
> > Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
> > From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>

> > > > Sadly, UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE sets its internal structure gl_state not for
> > > > the current contents of position 1948, but the contents of 1948 before
> > > > the change at the top of the buffer (Bitmap -> SharedBitmap) was made.
> > > > So it picks up the syntax for the "<" rather than the "B".

> > > Are you saying that we've modified buffer text, but
> > > re_match_2_internal still holds to a C pointer to buffer text before
> > > the change?

> > I don't think that's the case.  The relevant buffer pointers/sizes are
> > calculated (in search_buffer_re) as

> >     p1 = BEGV_ADDR;
> >     s1 = GPT_BYTE - BEGV_BYTE;
> >     p2 = GAP_END_ADDR;
> >     s2 = ZV_BYTE - GPT_BYTE;

> > each time before a search.

> So you are saying that gl_state uses a stale offset, which should have
> been updated due to the previous replacements?

More precisely, I think that the interval containing "Bitmap<" has not
been adjusted after the replacement of "Bitmap.h" by "SharedBitmap.h"
early in the .h file.

After this buffer change, adjust_intervals_for_insertion gets called.
This adds 6 onto the ->position field of each interval "adjusting all of
its ancestors by adding LENGTH to them", according to the comment at the
head of adjust_intervals_for_insertion.

Note this only adjusts the ancestors of that interval early in the .h
file, not all intervals in the tree.

gl_state contains a cached interval, gl_state->backward_i, and there is
no guarantee that its ->position will have been updated by
adjust_intervals_for_insertion.  In the current bug, I believe it hasn't
been adjusted.

The function update_syntax_table uses gl_state->backward_i to manoevre
its way to the current interval using update_interval.  If
gl_state->backward_i->position hasn't already been adjusted for the
insertion, the interval update_interval returns won't have been adjusted
either.

I'm reasonably sure this is what's happening:
adjust_intervals_for_insertion is failing to adjust the cached intervals
in gl_state.  It's a nasty cache invalidation problem.

I don't know how best to fix this.  Maybe a_i_f_insertion/deletion could
set a global flag which would signal to update_syntax_table that its
intervals are not reliable.  But that's horribly ugly.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).