Subject: Re: [coreutils] over aggressive threads in sort

From: DJ Lucas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 12:01:55 -0600

Sent too bug-coreutils too (no bug id currently AFAICT).

Bug only affects multi-byte locales. Take the following samples:

bash-4.1# zcat  cracklib-words-20080507.gz  | sort -u --debug > file &&
echo $?
sort: using `en_US.UTF-8' sorting rules
Segmentation fault
bash-4.1# echo $?
139
bash-4.1#

bash-4.1# zcat  cracklib-words-20080507.gz  | sort -u --parallel=1
--debug > file && echo $?
sort: using `en_US.UTF-8' sorting rules
0
bash-4.1#

bash-4.1# zcat  cracklib-words-20080507.gz  | LANG=C sort -u --debug >
file && echo $?
sort: using simple byte comparison
0
bash-4.1#

bash-4.1# gzip -d cracklib-words-20080507.gz
bash-4.1# sort -u --debug cracklib-words-20080507 > file && echo $?
sort: using `en_US.UTF-8' sorting rules
0
bash-4.1#

In the interim, for a quick and dirty hack, I've added an LC_COLLATE
comparison and set nthreads to 1 in multibyte locales.

Probably well known, but the test file that I used is available from:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/cracklib/cracklib-words-20080507.gz

-- DJ Lucas

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