Re: OpenSSL breaks factor(6)

On 29 Dec 2019, at 2:17, Steve Kargl wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 01:34:28AM -0500, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
>>>
>>> An interested user will need to add that support.  AFAIK, factor(6)
>>> has never recognized the 0x prefix, and I'm not trying to add new
>>> features.  I'm simply fixing factor(6) to match its documentation,
>>> and trying to ensure WITH_OPENSSL and WITHOUT_OPENSSL give the
>>> same results where applicable.
>>
>> Well, I'd be willing to do the work to add the new feature, and also
>> make the commit.  It'd be a nice easy task for me to tackle...  :)
>>
>> But I think documenting that "hex works, but only for hex values
>> which have at least one A-F in the value" is not something that I'd
>> want to draw attention to via documentation.
>>
>
> You have a 17 year history to worry about as hexadecimal support
> was added by "r104720 | fanf | 2002-10-09".  Compiling factor(6)
> with and without OpenSSL support after 2002-10-09 gives a utility
> with different inconsistent behavior.

If I understand you right, that behavior has not been documented
for 17 years.  If it continues to be un-documented, that cannot
possibly break any scripts.  I'm  not saying we should remove the
behavior, I'm just saying we don't need to document it.  Especially
not if we add support for a better way to specify hex values.

On 29 Dec 2019, at 1:50, Steve Kargl wrote:
>
>    Do what you want with the patch (including ignoring it).
>    Hopefully, someone in the FreeBSD project will now
>    recognize that factor(6) with and without OpenSSL gives
>    inconsistent results, and neither matches factor(6)'s
>    manpage.

Oh.  I tend to lose track with who is and isn't a src-committer on
FreeBSD.  I've seen your name enough that I assumed you were one.
If you're not, I can handle committing these changes, including the
new feature.  That'll keep my commit bit alive for another year!

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn = drosih_at_rpi.edu or gad_at_FreeBSD.org