uutils / uutils/coreutils

cut: cat /dev/zero |cut -c1- uses unbounded RAM

Open
#11,133 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

U - cut
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
24.1k
Forks
2k
Avg merge
1d 5h
Merged PRs (30d)
365

Description

fish> cat /dev/zero |cut -c1-
fish: Process 1347, 'cut' from job 1, 'cat /dev/zero |cut -c1-' terminated by signal SIGKILL (Forced quit) [SIGPIPE|SIGKILL]

It does not happen at GNU.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing cat /dev/zero | cut -c1- and compare its memory behavior with GNU cut. Trace the cut command entry point and determine how this unbounded input is buffered; done means the command no longer grows RAM without bound while preserving the requested character-range behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.