GNU bug report logs - #8587
Curious bug.

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Francois Boisson <francois <at> boisson.homeip.net>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: Curious bug.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:09:43 +0200

On a debian squeeze amd64.

francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
ABCD DIRECTORY
francois <at> totoche:~$ cd /tmp
francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné
francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
llll lirectory
francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ cd
francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
abcd directory
francois <at> totoche:~$ 


francois <at> totoche:/tmp/g$ tr --version
tr (GNU coreutils) 7.4
Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 ou ultérieure
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. Ceci est un logiciel "libre" : vous êtes
libre de le modifier et de le redistribuer. Ce logiciel n'offre pas d'autre
garantie que celle imposée par la loi.

Écrit par Jim Meyering.
francois <at> totoche:/tmp/g$ 

ii  libc6          2.10.2-2       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  coreutils      7.4-2          The GNU core utilities

I can give you more informations if you want.

Thanks for this work.

François Boisson

Message #10 received at 8587-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Francois Boisson <francois <at> boisson.homeip.net>
Cc: 8587-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#8587: Curious bug.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:53:35 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

tag 8587 notabug
close 8587
thanks

On 04/29/2011 01:09 PM, Francois Boisson wrote:
> On a debian squeeze amd64.
> 
> francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> ABCD DIRECTORY
> francois <at> totoche:~$ cd /tmp
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné

Thanks for the report.  However, this is not a bug in tr, but in your
usage of the shell.

Unquoted, the expression (without "") "[:lower:]" is the glob that
expands to any of the existing files: ":", "l", "o", "w", "e", "r"; and
if none of those files exists, then the glob is passed verbatim to tr.
Your results differed depending on whether the directory you were in had
files by those names.

But if you had used shell quoting, as in "'[:lower:]'", then there would
be no chance for the shell to do globbing.  That is, you meant to do:

echo ABCD Directory | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'

and were only getting lucky that there weren't any one-character file
names in your first directory.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake <at> redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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Message #13 received at 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Francois Boisson <francois <at> boisson.homeip.net>
Cc: 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#8587: Curious bug.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:06:56 +0100

On 29/04/11 20:09, Francois Boisson wrote:
> On a debian squeeze amd64.
> 
> francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> ABCD DIRECTORY
> francois <at> totoche:~$ cd /tmp
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné

So the operation is dependent on path.
That shows the shell is interpreting the params,
as demonstrated with:

$ touch l
$ echo [:lower:] [:upper:]
l [:upper:]

So you need to protect the params like:

$ tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'

cheers,
Pádraig.

Message #18 received at 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Alan Curry" <pacman-cu <at> kosh.dhis.org>
To: francois <at> boisson.homeip.net (Francois Boisson)
Cc: 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#8587: Curious bug.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:35:58 -0500 (GMT+5)

Francois Boisson writes:
> 
> On a debian squeeze amd64.
> 
> francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> ABCD DIRECTORY
> francois <at> totoche:~$ cd /tmp
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné

I can't read that error message but I can see what you did wrong.

[:upper:] is seen by the shell as a glob which matches these filenames:
  :
  e
  p
  r
  u
and likewise [:lower:] matches a different set of single-character filenames.

In one directory, you don't have any files named like that. In the other
directory, you do. When the glob matches nothing, the shell passes the string
[:upper:] or [:lower:] literally as an argument to the command. That's a
design flaw in the unix shell from its early days, which nobody has the guts
to fix.

Use '[:upper:]' and '[:lower:]' to make the shell treat them as literal
strings and not globs.

Switch to zsh for better diagnostics...

  % echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]
  zsh: no matches found: [:lower:]
  % echo ABCD Directory | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
  ABCD DIRECTORY

-- 
Alan Curry

Message #21 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Davide Brini <dave_br <at> gmx.com>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#8587: Curious bug.
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:30:08 +0100

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:09:43 +0200
Francois Boisson <francois <at> boisson.homeip.net> wrote:

> On a debian squeeze amd64.
> 
> francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> ABCD DIRECTORY
> francois <at> totoche:~$ cd /tmp
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
> llll lirectory
> francois <at> totoche:/tmp$ cd
> francois <at> totoche:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
> abcd directory
> francois <at> totoche:~$ 

Not a bug.

[:upper:] and [:lower:] are also shell patterns, and if a file in the
current directory matches them, they are expanded before tr sees them.
My guess is that you have a file named "l" under /tmp, so what tr sees is

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr l [:upper:] 
tr: misaligned [:upper:] and/or [:lower:] construct

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] l
llll lirectory

([:upper:], as a shell pattern, matches the characters ":", "u", "p", "e"
and "r"; [:lower:] matches the characters ":", "l", "o", "w", "e" and "r").

The solution, of course, is to protect the patterns from the shell by
quoting them:

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' 
ABCD DIRECTORY

-- 
D.

Message #24 received at 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Alan Curry <pacman-cu <at> kosh.dhis.org>
Cc: Francois Boisson <francois <at> boisson.homeip.net>, 8587 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#8587: Curious bug.
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 07:15:44 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 04/29/2011 03:35 PM, Alan Curry wrote:
> Use '[:upper:]' and '[:lower:]' to make the shell treat them as literal
> strings and not globs.
> 
> Switch to zsh for better diagnostics...
> 
>   % echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]
>   zsh: no matches found: [:lower:]
>   % echo ABCD Directory | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
>   ABCD DIRECTORY

That's not specific to zsh.  You can get that same behavior in bash:

$ echo [l]
[l]
$ shopt -s failglob
$ echo [l]
bash: no match: [l]

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake <at> redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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