tcl procs failing with ‘invalid argument to regex function’

[Alice Kazin]

In one of our sites, we are getting tcl errors concerning regex functions.

Sometimes all tcl procs with regex fail. Other times only 1 tcl proc fails. If the site is reset, the messages that failed can be resent without an error.

Sometimes the site crashes with Signal 10 or Signal 11. We are

running 3.8.1P on HP-Ux.

Topic

[Charlie Bursell]

Alice:

When we went to Tcl 8.3, we also went to the new regular expression engine which is part of Tcl 8.3.  This engine is what they refer to as Advanced Regular Expressions (AREs).

For the most part, regular expressions that were created under the old system will port with no problem.  The exception is, in the old REs you could do somthing like: “P”.  Since P is not a metacharacter it would simply convert to P.  In the AREs, if you escape a non-metacharacter you can get an error.  Check for that.

Other than that, I have implemeneted 1000s of AREs and have had no problem.

Let me know how it goes.

Charlie

[Author]

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