gawk core dumped on too many input values

[Brian Inglis]

On 2023-08-28 05:47, Joshuah Hurst via Cygwin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 28, 2023 at 1:08 AM Jeremy Hetzler via Cygwin
> <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 27, 2023 at 2:25 PM Ed Morton via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> This (original email below) turned out to be a general cygwin issue, not
>>> a gawk issue:
>>>
>>> $ LC_ALL=C sed 's/x/y/' $(seq 1000000)
>>> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>>>
>>> $ LC_ALL=C grep 'foo' $(seq 1000000)
>>> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>>>
>>
>> Seems that all commands linked with cygwin1.dll will fault if you pass them
>> a long enough arglist.
>>
>> For me, /bin/true faults on {1..258231} but not {1..258230}.
>>
>>> $ /bin/true {1..258230}
>>>
>>
>>
>>> $ /bin/true {1..258231}
>>> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>>
>>
>> strace, which is not linked with cygwin1.dll, exits cleanly.
>>
>>> $ /bin/strace {1..300000}
>>> -bash: /bin/strace: Argument list too long
>>
>>
>> See this page [1] on maximum argument lengths.
>>
>> It would be nice to document this limit, whatever it is.
> 
> Is this limit?
> 
> $ getconf -a | grep -E 'ARG_MAX'
> _POSIX_ARG_MAX                      4096
> ARG_MAX                             32000

On my system, /bin/true and /bin/echo get to between 250K and 256K before seg 
faulting, requiring between digits + separator + ptr (10+8)*(250-256)KB == 
3750-3840KB;

current Cygwin and `bash` `:` and `echo` internal commands get to between 128M 
and 256M before `bash` fork fails, and Windows gets unhappy with memory full, 
paging high, and page thrashing on both paging devices: calmed eventually with a 
few interrupts then `exec bash`;
requiring between digits + separator + ptr (10+8)*(128-256)MB == 2.25-4.5GB;

This seems to be extremely conservative:

$ xargs -r --show-limits <<< ' '
Your environment variables take up 9246 bytes
POSIX upper limit on argument length (this system): 20706
POSIX smallest allowable upper limit on argument length (all systems): 4096
Maximum length of command we could actually use: 11460
Size of command buffer we are actually using: 20706
Maximum parallelism (--max-procs must be no greater): 2147483647
$ seq $((256*1024)) | xargs | wc -lwcL
     102  262144 1723903   18094

Once a patch is in a test version of Cygwin, I can rebuild and release a test 
version of findutils, which includes xargs, with updated results in the test 
release announcement.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry