Segfault on pcregrep -M '(.|\n)*' /dev/zero

[Anders Kaseorg]

$ pcregrep -M '(.|\n)*' /dev/zero
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Reproduced on several machines.

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: amd64
Dependencies:
 libgcc1 1:4.3.3-3ubuntu5
 gcc-4.3-base 4.3.3-3ubuntu5
 libpcre3 7.8-2ubuntu1
 findutils 4.4.0-2ubuntu3
 libc6 2.9-0ubuntu9
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pcregrep
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia openafs
Package: pcregrep 7.8-2ubuntu1
ProcCmdline: pcregrep -M (.|\\n)* /dev/zero
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: pcre3
StacktraceTop:
 ?? () from /lib/libpcre.so.3
 ?? () from /lib/libpcre.so.3
 ?? () from /lib/libpcre.so.3
 ?? () from /lib/libpcre.so.3
 ?? () from /lib/libpcre.so.3
Title: pcregrep crashed with SIGSEGV
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-7-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax floppy fuse kvm lpadmin netdev plugdev powerdev pulse pulse-access pulse-rt scanner tape video

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

StacktraceTop:match (eptr=0x7fff754b74b8 "", ecode=0x119597f "V",
match (eptr=0x7fff754b74b7 "", ecode=0x1195974 "_",
match (eptr=0x7fff754b74b7 "", ecode=0x119597f "V",
match (eptr=0x7fff754b74b6 "", ecode=0x1195974 "_",
match (eptr=0x7fff754b74b6 "", ecode=0x119597f "V",

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

This looks like a stack overflow. Apparently, the upstream developers don’t in general consider stack overflows to be a bug:
<http://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797>

The crash can be avoided by configuring pcre with --disable-stack-for-recursion. However, the documentation says that “PCRE runs noticeably more slowly when built in this way”.

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

Reported upstream anyway: <http://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=810>

[dino99 (9d9)]

This version has died long ago; no more supported