[perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH

# New Ticket Created by  Father Chrysostomos 
# Please include the string:  [perl #129183]
# in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue. 
# <URL: https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=129183 >


On Unix, entries in PATH are separated by : and may validly contain backslashes.  ‘perl -S’ erroneously 

To demonstrate:

$ mkdir ~/'\'
$ cat > ~/'\'/foo
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hahaha!\n";
^D
$ chmod +x ~/'\'/foo
$ PATH=~/'\':$PATH foo
Hahaha!
$ PATH=~/'\':$PATH perl -S foo
Can't find foo on PATH.
$ echo $PATH
/Users/sprout/\:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin

perl is reading the initial ‘/Users/sprout/\:/usr/bin’ as one PATH entry, which is wrong.

The Perl_find_script function in util.c uses delimcpy to find the colon.  delimcpy allows the terminator to be escaped, which is inappropriate for this call site.

-- 

Father Chrysostomos

• [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Father Chrysostomos
• Re: [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Craig A. Berry
• Re: [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Tomasz Konojacki
• [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Father Chrysostomos via RT
• Re: [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Craig A. Berry
• [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Father Chrysostomos via RT
• Re: [perl #129183] perl -S erroneously allows \ escapes in PATH by Craig A. Berry