GNU bug report logs - #77535
timeout treats very short durations as `0`

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Package: coreutils;

Reported by: Nicolas Boichat <nicolas <at> boichat.ch>

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 16:13:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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From: Nicolas Boichat <nicolas <at> boichat.ch>
To: 77535 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#77535: timeout treats very short durations as `0`
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 17:26:56 +0200

Hi,

Version: timeout (GNU coreutils) 9.6, Archlinux, x86-64.

While playing with different duration parameters to `timeout`, I
noticed that extremely short durations, like `1e-3000`, are rounded
down to `0`. The problem is that `0` has a special meaning (disabling
the timeout), so I don't think this is desired.

All of these commands exit immediately:
```
timeout 0.0001 cat
timeout 1e-100 cat
timeout 1e-300 cat
timeout 1e-323 cat
```

But these never exits:
```
timeout 1e-324 cat
timeout 1e-3000 cat
```

As if we had typed:
```
timeout 0 cat
```

I think there is some logic in `printf` to handle float parsing
underflow, so maybe this can be reused in `timeout` as well.

Thanks,
This bug report was last modified 41 days ago.

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