Bug in wc.

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Monday 08 March 2010 01:48, Rob Landley wrote:
> And VMLINUZ_SIZE is:
> 
> VMLINUX_SIZE := $(shell wc -c $(objtree)/$(KBUILD_IMAGE) 2>/dev/null | \
> 	cut -d' ' -f1)
> 
> VMLINUX_SIZE is blank when using busybox tools.
> 
> The underlying behavioral wonkiness in busybox "cut" is:
> 
> $ busybox wc -c vmlinux
>   3335777 vmlinux
> $ wc -c vmlinux
> 3335777 vmlinux
> 
> Note that we have leading whitespace, the gnu version doesn't.  This leading 
> whitespace is confusing the kernel build, because the cut -d' ' then triggers 
> on our leading whitespace and produces an empty string, which propogates 
> through the rest of the build to confuse the linker with a start address of 
> "0x".
> 
> Why do we have unnecessary leading whitespace?  What happend to small and 
> simple and doing no more than absolutely necessary?

Good question, I'm redirecting it to author of busybox-1.2.1 (or earlier)
since 1.2.1 displays the same behavior. ;)
--
vda