misc/84520: whatis(1) program burps on /bin/[

[Gary W. Swearingen]

>Number:         84520
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       whatis(1) program burps on /bin/[
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Aug 03 15:20:06 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Gary W. Swearingen
>Release:        FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
none
>Environment:
n/a
>Description:
The "whatis"/"apropos" script doesn't handle the "/bin/[" program.

>How-To-Repeat:

$ /usr/bin/whatis [
grep: Unmatched [ or [^
[: nothing appropriate

$ /usr/bin/apropos [
grep: Unmatched [ or [^
[: nothing appropriate

>Fix:
patch gives this:

$ whatis [
 ihfc(4)                  - isdn4bsd ISA Cologne Chip HFC[-S][-SP] 2B[DS0] driver
 test(1), [(1)            - condition evaluation utility

$ apropos [
 ct(4)                    - WD33C93[ABC] based CBUS SCSI host adapter driver
 ihfc(4)                  - isdn4bsd ISA Cologne Chip HFC[-S][-SP] 2B[DS0] driver
 ndiscvt(8)               - convert Windows[rg] NDIS drivers for use with
 test(1), [(1)            - condition evaluation utility

I gave up after a serious try at developing a more general fix.

I'd normally use an "if", but the script seems to like "case" and
it does prepare for additional exceptional cases.


--- /usr/bin/whatis	Sun May  8 00:02:01 2005
+++ /tmp/whatis	Tue Aug  2 16:16:44 2005
@@ -84,6 +84,10 @@
 
 for manpage
 do
+        case "$manpage" in
+                '[') manpage='\[';;
+        esac
+
 	if grep -Ehi $grepopt -- "$manpage" $mandir; then :
 	else
         	echo "$manpage: nothing appropriate"
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: