Comment author: bluestorm

Note : also reproduced in SVN trunk.

Comment author: @pierreweis

Thank you for reporting this strange and puzzling bug.

I will correct it as soon as possible; for the time being, you may use the ``%,'' conversion separator to clearly delineate your two conversions:

    Objective Caml version 3.12.2+dev1 (2011-08-03)

Scanf.sscanf "string1%string2" "%s@%%,%s" (fun s1 s2 -> s1, s2);;

• : string * string = ("string1", "string2")

As an additional benefit, you will also get:

Scanf.sscanf "string1%string2" "%s@%%,%s" (fun s1 s2 -> s1, s2) ();;

Error: This expression has type string * string
but an expression was expected of type 'a -> 'b

which is indeed the expected behaviour of the type checker.

Stay tune for a complete correction in the working sources.

Comment author: @xclerc

Tentative fix by revision 11233 in branch "version/3.12".

Comment author: @xclerc

Reverted the commit, the tentative fix being awfully wrong.

Comment author: @pierreweis

I fixed the bug. It was indeed not trivial to correct and was hiding there for years!

In short, previous versions of the compiler accepted incorrect format strings that should not be typable (although those format strings were conformant to the documentation). Hence the seg fault you observed :(

To correct this nasty situation, I was obliged to slightly modify the conventions for the @ character in format strings, as follows.

As you may know, %% is equivalent to a plain % character and @@ to a plain @ character. I had to add the extra convention that @% is equivalent to a plain % character. As a consequence, some code that was (wrongly) accepted before may now fail to compile with a typing error. Consider for instance the "@%s" format string; before the correction of the bug it was made of one plain @ character followed by a string conversion; now, the new convention turns @% to a plain % character: the format string is thus equivalent to 2 plain characters, and the string conversion has vanished. To correct this format, simply double the @ to recover the plain @ character, writing "@@%s".

The good news is that the corrected format string is already valid and equivalent to the wrong one in all the distributed versions of the compiler (including 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and the SVN trunk).

So that you can safely correct your code in advance and prevent any bad surprise with the forecoming versions of OCaml!

Comment author: @pierreweis

This is indeed a tough issue!

My correction was still buggy. I reopen the BR to find a better and correct way to get rid of the bug.

Comment author: @pierreweis

The solution was simply to enforce the current treatment of '%' in format strings:

Every occurrence of '%' in a format string is considered as introducing a conversion, unless escaped as "%%" to stand for a plain '%' character. This rule now stands within character ranges and format string indications.

So, to read a string until a plain character '%' you must write the format string "%s@%%".

Mutatis mutandis, the same rule apply to '@' characters in format strings:

Every occurrence of '@' in a format string is considered as introducing a format string indication, unless escaped as "%@" to stand for a plain '@' character. This rule now stands within character ranges and format string indications.

So, to read a string until a plain character '@' you must write the format string "%s@%@".

For sake of backward compatibility, occurrences of '@' that does not start a valid format string indication are still accepted.

This unified treatment of '%' and '@' in format strings corrects the bug and preserves existing programs.

Comment author: @pierreweis

Corrected in version 3.12.2.