[Mailman-Users] pcre traceback (was: Help)

[Greg Ward]

On 17 August 2001, Aly S.P Dharshi said:
> 	I have installed mailman 2.0.6 from the main site and its running on 
> a RedHat 7.1/7.0 system. 

OK, but you haven't told us what Python version.  I suspect that's
important here!

Also, as an aside, subject lines like "Help" are pretty useless.  I
often delete such messages without bothering to read them, and I'm sure
lots of other people do.  

> 	Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "/home/mailman/cron/qrunner", line 85, in ?
>     from Mailman import MailList
>   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 45, in ?
>     from Mailman.Archiver import Archiver
>   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/__init__.py", line 17, in ?
>     from Archiver import *
>   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Archiver/Archiver.py", line 33, in ?
>     from Mailman import Mailbox
>   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Mailbox.py", line 27, in ?
>     class Mailbox(mailbox.UnixMailbox):
>   File "/home/mailman/Mailman/Mailbox.py", line 31, in Mailbox
>     _regexp = re.compile(_fromlinepattern)
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/re.py", line 79, in compile
>     code=pcre_compile(pattern, flags, groupindex)
> pcre.error: ('nothing to repeat', 36)

Let's see if we can reproduce this error outside of Mailman.  Fire up a
Python interpreter:

  $ python

and at the ">>>" prompt enter:

  import re
  p = r'From \s*\S+\s+\w\w\w\s+\w\w\w\s+\d\d?\s+' \
      r'\d\d?:\d\d(:\d\d)?(\s+\S+)?\s+\d\d\d\d\s*$'
  re.compile(p)

For Python 1.5.2 or 1.6, Python should see print something like this:

  <re.RegexObject instance at 8082a30>

For Python 2.0 and later, it should print something like this:

  <SRE_Pattern object at 0x8136c00>

If you get one of those, you may have found a Mailman bug.  If instead
you get stack dump, you *might* have found a Python bug, but it's more
likely that there's something wrong with your Python installation.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                gward at mems-exchange.org
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org