[net.sources.bugs] help command

aeb@turing.UUCP (11/13/84)

This is a nice little program; unfortunately it dumped core on me the
very first time I tried it.
Patch (around the call of send_man):
	if(item_ptr->down == NULLPTR)	/* must be manual */ {
		send_man(item_ptr);
		item_ptr = item_ptr->up;
	}
	item_count = send_list(item_ptr->down);

and don't let send_man return any value. (While looking at the code in
send_man() you might note some other bizarre things, like the double
call to wait, and the return after execlp failed.)

The problem was that after a call to send_man item_count had the wrong
value, so that any legal answer would give a core dump.

(I cannot give a diff listing since I ran the source through indent
and threw out all full line comments without information that made
the program so difficult to read. Well chosen identifiers are a better
documentation than comments like
/*......... here the variables are declared ...........................*/
and the likes.)
-- 
      Andries Brouwer -- CWI, Amsterdam -- {philabs,decvax}!mcvax!aeb