On 6/12/26 1:30 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
On 12/06/2026 01:35, Collin Funk wrote:
Hi all,
I noticed the following inconsistent error message in GNU coreutils:
$ od -S $'\t'
od: invalid -S argument ' '
For clarity, would would usually escape that, e.g., like this:
$ uname $'\t'
uname: extra operand ‘\t’
Try 'uname --help' for more information.
The cause of this inconsistency is the xstrtol-error module, which does
not use quote().
I am proposing the attached patch to fix this inconsistency. However,
since it affects other packages, I felt it would be rude to make this
change without asking for approval. Here is the list of affected
packages from the lists in maint-tools.git:
$ git grep -F 'xstrtol-error' used-modules/
used-modules/coreutils: xstrtol-error
used-modules/datamash: xstrtol-error
used-modules/findutils: xstrtol-error
I beleive findutils and datamash already use quote() so I think (and
hope) this change is uncontroversial.
Thanks for taking the time to audit usage.
Given the existing usage, the change looks good I think.
I'm also fine for GNU findutils: there's only one use of xstrol_fatal in
locate(1).
Thank you & have a nice day,
Berny
