[tex-live] uninitialized line number in pdfTeX

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
>      MALLOC_PERTURB_=69
>      MALLOC_CHECK_=3
>
> Ah.  I can reproduce with those settings.  Now to look into the code and
> get the variable initialized.
>
> Aside: do you happen to know if these are canonical features of glibc or
> introduced somewhere downstream?  I ask because they are not mentioned
> in the current libc manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/) --
> MALLOC_CHECK_ with values <=2 is discussed, but not 3, and
> MALLOC_PERTURB_ is not mentioned.  So if they are in the base glibc, as
> I expect they are, we should report a documentation bug.

Some already reported the problem against RH 5+6
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615050>

Quoting from the bug report: "For 6.1 try info '(libc)Malloc Tunable
Parameters'"

>
>    BTW, value 0 looks wrong for me also...
>
> I speculate that it (and the uninitialized value in the first place) is
> due to the source file using macros, and macros being treated
> essentially like files in the implementation (of \scantokens in eTeX).
> There is no access to the "real" line number at the TeX level, last I
> looked into it.  It's been a longstanding problem.
>
> Thanks,
> karl
>



-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia