bug#8587: Curious bug.

[Davide Brini]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:09:43 +0200
Francois Boisson <address@hidden> wrote:

> On a debian squeeze amd64.
> 
> address@hidden:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> ABCD DIRECTORY
> address@hidden:~$ cd /tmp
> address@hidden:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] 
> tr: construit [:upper:] et/ou [:lower:] mal aligné
> address@hidden:/tmp$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
> llll lirectory
> address@hidden:/tmp$ cd
> address@hidden:~$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] 
> abcd directory
> address@hidden:~$ 

Not a bug.

[:upper:] and [:lower:] are also shell patterns, and if a file in the
current directory matches them, they are expanded before tr sees them.
My guess is that you have a file named "l" under /tmp, so what tr sees is

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr l [:upper:] 
tr: misaligned [:upper:] and/or [:lower:] construct

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr [:upper:] l
llll lirectory

([:upper:], as a shell pattern, matches the characters ":", "u", "p", "e"
and "r"; [:lower:] matches the characters ":", "l", "o", "w", "e" and "r").

The solution, of course, is to protect the patterns from the shell by
quoting them:

$ echo ABCD Directory | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' 
ABCD DIRECTORY

-- 
D.