Comment 1 for bug 1385859

The immediate crash is fixed in r7225.

The problem was code like this:

char* b;
b = boost::format(...).str().c_str();

the problem is that the call to str() will create a std::string() that is then immediately destroyed again. The system is free to reuse the memory that c_str() is pointing to again (since it belonged to the deleted std::string()). In some cases it will do that, in some it will not - that is why the crash happens on some systems but not all.

I grepped through the code base ('format.*c_str') and found more cases where this is happening - note that this is no guarantee that fixing all these removes the problem forever, as code like this is not found but is broken too:

const char* b;
{
   std::string a = format().str();
   b = a.c_str();
}
// the data b is pointing to is undefined here and should not be used.

But the easily greppable cases must be fixed quickly.