mawk 1.3.3-17ubuntu2 incorrectly handles "/" in "[ ]" expressions

[Tom Parkin]

Binary package hint: mawk

Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

Package version: mawk 1.3.3-13ubuntu1

Whilst attempting to run a shell script to automate the build procedure for an embedded platform I came across a parsing error in the mawk installation on my Ubuntu 9.04 box. I followed this up with the script author, and then the mawk maintainer, and determined that:

  (a). The behavior of mawk 1.3.3-13ubuntu1 is incorrect
  (b). The incorrect behavior exhibited by mawk 1.3.3-13ubuntu1 is not exhibited by the upstream sources mawk-1.3.3-20090920 when built on my Ubuntu box

The error case can be demonstrated using this script fragment:

for interpretter in gawk mawk;
do
echo "Running with $interpretter..."
echo
echo "diecimila.name=Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove, or Nano w/ATmega168" | \
$interpretter -v FS== '{boardname=$2; gsub(/[^a-zA-Z0-9_,./():-]/, "", boardname); print boardname }'
echo
done

When run using my system's mawk installation I get the following output:

Running with gawk...

ArduinoDiecimila,Duemilanove,orNanow/ATmega168

Running with mawk...

mawk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (bad class -- [], [^] or [)
[^a-zA-Z0-9_,.
mawk: line 1: syntax error at or near )
bash: echo: write error: Broken pipe

When run using the upstream mawk I get the following output:

Running with gawk...

ArduinoDiecimila,Duemilanove,orNanow/ATmega168

Running with ./mawk...

ArduinoDiecimila,Duemilanove,orNanow/ATmega168

For reference, I built the upstream mawk package as follows:

./compile && make

That is, I used whatever defaults the autoconf script picked for my system.

[Gert Hulselmans (hulselmansgert)]

The problem is still in mawk of Ubuntu 10.10

I found a version of mawk, maintained by a new developer:
  http://invisible-island.net/mawk/

New mawk changelog (debian patches included + new things):
  http://invisible-island.net/mawk/CHANGES

This version works as expected too:

for interpretter in gawk mawk ../mawk-1.3.4-20100625/mawk ; do
  echo "Running with $interpretter...";
  echo;
  echo "diecimila.name=Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove, or Nano w/ATmega168" | $interpretter -v FS== '{boardname=$2; gsub(/[^a-zA-Z0-9_,./():-]/, "", boardname); print boardname }';
  echo;
done

------------------------------------------------------------
Running with gawk...

ArduinoDiecimila,Duemilanove,orNanow/ATmega168

Running with mawk...

mawk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (bad class -- [], [^] or [)
[^a-zA-Z0-9_,.
mawk: line 1: syntax error at or near )

Running with ../mawk-1.3.4-20100625/mawk...

ArduinoDiecimila,Duemilanove,orNanow/ATmega168

------------------------------------------------------------

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Package 1.3.3-17ubuntu2 has this bug, too. It is part of the latest release of Ubuntu.

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas)]

mawk in Ubuntu and Debian is 18 years, see LP bug #1332114
Many bugs of Mawk are fixed in a new upstream versions 1.3.4-2010nnnn-2015nnnn, but the Debian maintainer does not want to update for an obscure reason.
We need to push here: http://bugs.debian.org/554167

[madbiologist (me-again)]

This bug is finally fixed in mawk 1.3.4.20200120-2 which is available in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" and later releases. ✔️