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A 35-Year-Old Bug in Patch Found in Efforts to Restore 29 Year Old 2.11BSD

posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 21 2020, @05:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the cleaning-the-window-sill dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A 35-year-old bug in patch found in efforts to restore 29 year old 2.11BSD:

Larry Wall posted patch 1.3 to mod.sources on May 8, 1985. A number of versions followed over the years. It's been a faithful alley [sic] for a long, long time. I've never had a problem with patch until I embarked on the 2.11BSD restoration project. In going over the logs very carefully, I've discovered a bug that bites this effort twice. It's quite interesting to use 27 year old patches to find this bug while restoring a 29 year old OS...

After some careful research, this turned out to be a fairly obscure bug in an odd edge case caused by "the state of email in the 1980s." which can be relegated to the dustbin of history...

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  • (Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Saturday August 22 2020, @01:24PM

    by leon_the_cat (10052) on Saturday August 22 2020, @01:24PM (#1040355) Journal

    I know you did that on purpose but I will send you a patch for your comment anyway.

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