URL:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64469>
Summary: -o with out-of-range number produces
incomprehensible error
Group: GNU roff
Submitter: barx
Submitted: Mon 24 Jul 2023 05:39:19 PM CDT
Category: Driver grops
Severity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: Warning/Suspicious behaviour
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Any
Planned Release: None
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Follow-up Comments:
-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 24 Jul 2023 05:39:19 PM CDT By: Dave <barx>
$ groff --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.22.4
$ echo Hello. | groff -o2 | wc
202 577 3664
$ groff-latest --version | head -1
GNU groff version 1.23.0.rc4.19-96b92-dirty
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o2 | wc
grops:<standard input>:5: fatal error: 'V' command invalid before first 'p'
command
0 0 0
$ echo Hello. | groff-latest -o1 | wc
267 820 6662
This post-rc4 build is not _quite_ the same as the released groff 1.23, but by
this point I believe there were no further code changes before the release, so
I suspect (but have not built 1.23 to confirm) that this bug is in the
release.
In the -o2 case, the user is asking for a page that doesn't exist, so an error
is not unwarranted. But the error generated gives little clue what the
problem is. Groff 1.22.4 produced no error here, emitting a PostScript
document with no pages--which may not be the ideal outcome either but I think
is slightly better than the incomprehensible diagnostic, and is arguably
giving the user precisely what they asked for.
Someone testing rc3 came across similar error message
(http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2023-02/msg00133.html). This turned out to be
contingent on a specific setting of the $GROFF_ENCODING environment variable.
My environment does not have this variable (nor any other GROFF environment
variable) set.
(Found this issue while poking into
http://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-groff/2023-07/msg00144.html)
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