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[PATCH v4 1/5] t9300: factor out portable "head -c" replacement

From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date
Jun 30, 2016, 09:07 UTC
Message-ID
<20160630090753.GA17463@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To
<20160630090614.GA16725@sigill.intra.peff.net>

In shell scripts it is sometimes useful to be able to read exactly N bytes from a pipe. Doing this portably turns out to be surprisingly difficult.

We want a solution that:
  - is portable
  - never reads more than N bytes due to buffering (which
    would mean those bytes are not available to the next
    program to read from the same pipe)
  - handles partial reads by looping until N bytes or read
    (or we see EOF)
  - is resilient to stray signals giving us EINTR while
    trying to read (even though we don't send them, things
    like SIGWINCH could cause apparently-random failures)
Some possible solutions are:
  - "head -c" is not portable, and implementations may
    buffer (though GNU head does not)
  - "read -N" is a bash-ism, and thus not portable
  - "dd bs=$n count=1" does not handle partial reads. GNU dd
    has iflags=fullblock, but that is not portable
  - "dd bs=1 count=$n" fixes the partial read problem (all
    reads are 1-byte, so there can be no partial response).
    It does make a lot of write() calls, but for our tests
    that's unlikely to matter.  It's fairly portable. We
    already use it in our tests, and it's unlikely that
    implementations would screw up any of our criteria. The
    most unknown one would be signal handling.
  - perl can do a sysread() loop pretty easily. On my Linux
    system, at least, it seems to restart the read() call
    automatically. If that turns out not to be portable,
    though, it would be easy for us to handle it.

That makes the perl solution the least bad (because we conveniently omitted "length of code" as a criterion). It's also what t9300 is currently using, so we can just pull the implementation from there.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 t/t9300-fast-import.sh  | 23 +++--------------------
 t/test-lib-functions.sh | 14 ++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)
diff --git a/t/t9300-fast-import.sh b/t/t9300-fast-import.sh
index 74d740d..2e0ba3e 100755
--- a/t/t9300-fast-import.sh
+++ b/t/t9300-fast-import.sh
@@ -7,23 +7,6 @@ test_description='test git fast-import utility'
 . ./test-lib.sh
 . "$TEST_DIRECTORY"/diff-lib.sh ;# test-lib chdir's into trash
 
-# Print $1 bytes from stdin to stdout.
-#
-# This could be written as "head -c $1", but IRIX "head" does not
-# support the -c option.
-head_c () {
-	perl -e '
-		my $len = $ARGV[1];
-		while ($len > 0) {
-			my $s;
-			my $nread = sysread(STDIN, $s, $len);
-			die "cannot read: $!" unless defined($nread);
-			print $s;
-			$len -= $nread;
-		}
-	' - "$1"
-}
-
 verify_packs () {
 	for p in .git/objects/pack/*.pack
 	do
@@ -2481,7 +2464,7 @@ test_expect_success PIPE 'R: copy using cat-file' '
 
 		read blob_id type size <&3 &&
 		echo "$blob_id $type $size" >response &&
-		head_c $size >blob <&3 &&
+		test_copy_bytes $size >blob <&3 &&
 		read newline <&3 &&
 
 		cat <<-EOF &&
@@ -2524,7 +2507,7 @@ test_expect_success PIPE 'R: print blob mid-commit' '
 		EOF
 
 		read blob_id type size <&3 &&
-		head_c $size >actual <&3 &&
+		test_copy_bytes $size >actual <&3 &&
 		read newline <&3 &&
 
 		echo
@@ -2559,7 +2542,7 @@ test_expect_success PIPE 'R: print staged blob within commit' '
 		echo "cat-blob $to_get" &&
 
 		read blob_id type size <&3 &&
-		head_c $size >actual <&3 &&
+		test_copy_bytes $size >actual <&3 &&
 		read newline <&3 &&
 
 		echo deleteall
diff --git a/t/test-lib-functions.sh b/t/test-lib-functions.sh
index 48884d5..90856d6 100644
--- a/t/test-lib-functions.sh
+++ b/t/test-lib-functions.sh
@@ -961,3 +961,17 @@ test_env () {
 		done
 	)
 }
+
+# Read up to "$1" bytes (or to EOF) from stdin and write them to stdout.
+test_copy_bytes () {
+	perl -e '
+		my $len = $ARGV[1];
+		while ($len > 0) {
+			my $s;
+			my $nread = sysread(STDIN, $s, $len);
+			die "cannot read: $!" unless defined($nread);
+			print $s;
+			$len -= $nread;
+		}
+	' - "$1"
+}
-- 
2.9.0.317.g65b4e7c
Previous: Jeff KingNext: Eric Sunshine
Message 9 of 42 in “friendlier handling of overflows in archive-tar”
  1. 0/5 friendlier handling of overflows in archive-tarJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  2. 5/5 archive-tar: drop return valueJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  3. 3/5 archive-tar: write extended headers for file sizes >= 8GBJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  4. Johannes SixtJul 14, 2016
  5. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  6. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  7. Torsten BögershausenJul 15, 2016
  8. 4/5 archive-tar: write extended headers for far-future mtimeJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  9. 1/5 t9300: factor out portable "head -c" replacementJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  10. Eric SunshineJul 1, 2016
  11. Junio C HamanoJul 1, 2016
  12. Jeff KingJul 1, 2016
  13. 6/5 t5000: use test_match_signalJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  14. 2/5 t5000: test tar files that overflow ustar headersJeff King, Jun 30, 2016
  15. Johannes SchindelinJul 14, 2016
  16. Johannes SixtJul 14, 2016
  17. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  18. Johannes SixtJul 14, 2016
  19. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  20. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  21. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  22. Torsten BögershausenJul 15, 2016
  23. Jeff KingJul 15, 2016
  24. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  25. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  26. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  27. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  28. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  29. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  30. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  31. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  32. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  33. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  34. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  35. 0/2 ulong may only be 32-bit wideJunio C Hamano, Jul 14, 2016
  36. 2/2 archive-tar: huge offset and future timestamps would not work on 32-bitJunio C Hamano, Jul 14, 2016
  37. Jeff KingJul 14, 2016
  38. Junio C HamanoJul 14, 2016
  39. Duy NguyenJul 16, 2016
  40. 1/2 t0006: skip "far in the future" test when unsigned long is not long enoughJunio C Hamano, Jul 14, 2016
  41. Johannes SchindelinJul 15, 2016
  42. Junio C HamanoJul 15, 2016

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