Bug 1436432 - col command mangles highlight strings
Summary: col command mangles highlight strings
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: util-linux
Version: rawhide
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Karel Zak
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2017-03-27 22:59 UTC by George R. Goffe
Modified: 2017-05-03 16:10 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-05-03 12:26:17 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
flat file used as input to this command (35.17 KB, text/plain)
2017-03-27 22:59 UTC, George R. Goffe
no flags Details

Description George R. Goffe 2017-03-27 22:59:53 UTC
Created attachment 1266775 [details]
flat file used as input to this command

Description of problem:


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
util-linux-2.29.1-2.fc26.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.col -b < input-file (provided) > output-file
2.
3.

Actual results:
incorrect handling of highlight strings

Expected results:


Additional info:

Input file is a script output of a dnf script installing packages. dnf produces "no package" <package> "available message and attempts to highlight the "package" name. Col -b mangles the package name.

Comment 1 Karel Zak 2017-05-03 12:26:17 UTC
The col(1) command is not supposed to be a general text processor, it was a roff pre-processor and according to standards opengroup.org:

"the only control characters accepted are space, backspace, tab,carriage-return and newline characters, SI, SO, VT, reverse line-feed, forward half-line-feed and reverse half-line-feed.  The VT character is an alternative form of full reverse line-feed, included for compatibility with some earlier programs of this type.  The only other characters to be copied to the output are those that are printable."



The current upstream decision is WONTFIX.

Comment 2 George R. Goffe 2017-05-03 16:10:25 UTC
Karel,

So, the input file contains other characters than those supposedly supported by the col command? Yes? The world evolves but col does not. Is that your position?

George...


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