I just noticed that I had a relevant environment variable set: my
~/.cshrc contains the line
  setenv GZIP '--best --no-name'
(I put that in many years ago, and had long forgotten about it.)

With this environment variable unset, gzip on my test case no longer
core-dumps.  So... maybe this PR should (conceptually) be retitled to

  if GZIP environment variable is set to Gnu gzip options which we
  don't support, /usr/bin/gzip with long argument list core-dumps

I still think this is a bug (well-behaved software should diagnose
unknown/unsupported command-line options rather than core-dumping),
but it's arguable a slightly less serious bug than I'd originally
thought.

ciao,

-- 
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" 
<[email protected]>
   Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
   "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
    powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
                                      -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam

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