Subject: bug#78001: 30.1; `M-x man` errors on macOS 15 after sed(1) RE syntax change

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:57:02 +0300

> From: Justin Flude <[email-masked]>
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 19:04:27 +0000
> 
> Steps to reproduce:-
> 
> 1. On a macOS 15 computer run `emacs -Q -nw` in a terminal
> 2. Type the command `M-x man` then enter `ls`
> 3. A `*Man ls*` buffer appears with this error:-
> 
>   sed: 1: "/^[\o001-\o032][\o001-\ ...": RE error: invalid character
>   range
> 
> The command works fine for the same version of Emacs (30.1) on my macOS
> Catalina Macbook.

This was solved on the master branch a day or two ago.

> The issue also occurs when Emacs is run as a GUI from the Finder.  It
> affects to my knowledge the latest Emacs distributed by Homebrew and
> MacPorts.
> 
> Analysis: it appears that recent versions of macOS have changed the way
> quoting works in sed(1) regular expressions.  The problem can be
> reproduced without Emacs when just running sed(1) in a Bash shell, and
> with no environment variables set other than PATH and TERM.

I suggest to install GNU Sed as a workaround, it should have no
problem with these regular expressions.