Re: /bin/ls is impure!
>>>>> On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, "Norbert" == Norbert Veber wrote:
[snip]
Norbert> --> Now run ls.
I can reproduce this.
[snip]
Norbert> Be prepared to abort it before it consumes all the available
Norbert> memory on your system.
[snip]
Norbert> To me it looks like this would be a bug in ls, though I
Norbert> cant figure out what is causing it, or why it happens after
Norbert> running purity. The environment is unchanged, the aliases are
Norbert> unchanged, the only difference is that ls no longer works.
Did you check the COLUMNS environment variable?
brooks% echo $COLUMNS
80
brooks% /usr/games/purity list
welcome to the purity test. the current available tests are:
mtrek - see how muck of an mtrek geek you are...
nerd - tests to see how "nerdy" you are...
hacker - a hard core computer hacker purity test.
format - an explanation of the data file format (for writing your own tests)
sample - prints a generic sample datafile
to run each test, use "purity <type_of_test> [flags]".
bye.
brooks% echo $COLUMNS
49151
IIRC the memory use of the algorithm ls uses to sort its output into
varying-length columns increases greatly with wider terminals. Something
this absurdly large will cause the algorithm to start eating RAM, just as
reported. However, *why* COLUMNS gets set so big is another matter...
purity seems to be causing this. No idea why or how, but it seems to be
the culprit.
thanks,
-chris
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Chris Danis screech@mad.scientist.com
danish@debian.org screechco@home.com
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org dadanish@usa.net
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