zdiff problem

[Bruce Dubbs]

Dan Nicholson wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Bruce Dubbs <bruce.dubbs at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm trying to address ticket #2315 that says zdiff doesn't work.  I confirmed
>> this by creating two files with a one line difference and compressing them:
>>
>> gzip file1
>> gzip file2
>>
>> But 'zdiff file1.gz file2.gz' gives no output.  Older versions of the script
>> work properly.
>>
>> The code in the script is really convoluted.   I found an error report in the
>> gzip archives about this:
>>
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gzip/2008-02/msg00002.html
>>
>> I note that there was never a reply to the message and that was over a year ago.
> 
> The bug-gzip list unfortunately is pretty dead. I subscribed to it to
> submit a patch for this specific problem, but I never got around to
> submitting the patch or unsubscribing. :)
> 
>> The problem code looks like:
>>
>> gzip_status=$(
>>   exec 4>&1
>>       (gzip -cdfq -- "$1" 4>&-; echo $? >&4) 3>&- |
>>     ( (gzip -cdfq -- "$2" 4>&-; echo $? >&4) 3>&- 5<&- </dev/null |
>>        eval "$cmp" /dev/fd/5 -) 5<&0
>> )
>>
>> When I look at /dev/fd, I only have 0 through 3 (and on RH and Ubuntu other
>> systems too, but none use gzip-1.3.12).
> 
> /dev/fd/ is just a symlink to the current process file descriptors.
> Typically you have 0, 1 and 2 for stdin, stdout and stderr. But a
> process can open up any more it wants. In this case, fd 5 is opened by
> the redirection.
> 
>> The fix appears to be changing the last line above to
>>    eval "$cmp" /dev/fd/5 - >&3) 5<&0
>>                           ^^^^    added
>>
>> We can fix this with this with the following:
>>
>>    sed -i 's/5 -)/5 >\&3)/' zdiff
>>
>> but I don't understand what is really going one here.
>>
>> Should I make this change?  Comments?
> 
> I think that's right looking at the rest of the script (I agree it's a
> pretty hairy script). I wish I could find the patch I made before, but
> I can't seem to locate it now.

After I made the original post, I found the same fix in the current Debian 
patch.  I guess I'll go ahead and add the sed.

Thanks for the confirmation Dan.

   -- Bruce