Re: [PATCH] Fix sloppy Getopt::Long.

From: Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org>
Date: May 5, 2009, 20:21 UTC
Message-ID: <robbat2.20090505T200652.976942941Z@orbis-terrarum.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vfxfj1gu9.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 12:37:34PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> "Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org> writes:
> 
> > Getopt-Long v2.38 is much stricter about sloppy getopt usage. The
> > trailing pipe causes git-svn testcases to fail for all of the --stdin
> > argument calls.
> 
> I am not objecting at all; just asking for clarification.
> 
> > -			{ 'stdin|' => \$_stdin, %cmt_opts, %fc_opts, } ],
> > +			{ 'stdin' => \$_stdin, %cmt_opts, %fc_opts, } ],
> 
> Is this "pipe" supposed to be followed by an alternative spelling of the
> option, as in
> 	'stdin|standard-input' => \$_stdin, ...

Yes. Short form or alternative long form.

> and is the sloppyness that it would be crazy to accept either --stdin or
> just -- (without actual option name) for this option?

Within the main loop, both '--' and '-' are treated as special cases earlier on before the matching of options is done. '--' is the explicit separator, while '-' is an argument (or a value to an option), not an option in itself.

Show 6 quoted lines

> Could an older version of Getopt::Long() have accepted
> 
> 	$ command --foo --bar - other args
> 
> to set $_stdin to true with that "sloppy" syntax?  If so people could have
> relied on such a behaviour, which is a bit worrying.

As far as I can follow in the Getopt::Long code, with the old case of 'stdin|', the empty string case would never have matched anyway.

The v2.38 change in respect to this is not described in the upstream CHANGES, but boils down to this single modification:

Getopt-Long-2.38/lib/Getopt/Long.pm:

@@ -777,7 +776,7 @@
             # Option name
             (?: \w+[-\w]* )
             # Alias names, or "?"
-            (?: \| (?: \? | \w[-\w]* )? )*
+            (?: \| (?: \? | \w[-\w]* ) )*
           )?

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85