Hi Cornelius, On Sat, Sep 27, 2025 at 03:08:02PM +0200, Cornelius Roemer wrote: > Package: moreutils > Version: 0.67-1 > Severity: normal > Tags: patch, upstream > > On macOS (Darwin 64-bit), `sponge` fails when reading files of size ≥2 GiB: > > $ truncate -s 2147483648 in > $ cat in | sponge out > sponge: failed to read from stdin: Invalid argument > > This happens because Darwin's `read(2)` system call rejects requests > where `count > INT_MAX` (2,147,483,647), even though SSIZE_MAX is much > larger on 64-bit. When sponge tries to read 2 GiB in a single call, > `read()` fails with EINVAL. > > Linux accepts such large reads, so the issue only shows up on macOS and > BSDs that impose the INT_MAX limit. > > Expected behavior: > `sponge` should be able to handle arbitrarily large inputs, regardless > of platform, by reading in chunks up to the maximum allowed size. > > Proposed fix: > Limit the size of each `read()` call to `min(SSIZE_MAX, INT_MAX)`. > I’ve written a patch which adds a small `safe_read()` helper and uses it > in the two places where `sponge` reads input. > > Patch is attached: > moreutils-e615f47-sponge: Fix "Invalid argument" error with 2GB+ files on > macOS.patch > > This has been tested on macOS Sonoma with 2–3 GiB files, and works > correctly. The performance impact is negligible (<1 extra syscall per > 2 GiB read).
thanks for the bug report and the patch! As this is not reproducible with any Debian system: Would you mind sending the patch directly to upstream (see README for the mail address)? I could do that as well, but in case of detail discussions its probably better if you can reply directly in case it's necessary. Kind regards, Nicolas
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