On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 05:45:06PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > It is true that many code paths populate the mmfile_t structure silently > appending a NUL, e.g. when running textconv on a temporary file and > reading the results back into an strbuf. > > The assumption is most definitely wrong, however, when mmap()ing a file. > > Practically, we seemed to be lucky that the bytes after mmap()ed memory > were 1) accessible and 2) somehow contained NUL bytes *somewhere*. > > In a use case reported by Chris Sidi, it turned out that the mmap()ed > file had the precise size of a memory page, and on Windows the bytes > after memory-mapped pages are in general not valid. > > This patch works around that issue, giving us time to discuss the best > course how to fix this problem more generally. I don't know if we are in that much of a rush. This bug has been around for many years (the thread I linked earlier is from 2012). Yes, it's bad and annoying, but we can probably spend a few days discussing the solution. > diff --git a/diff.c b/diff.c > index 534c12e..32f7f46 100644 > --- a/diff.c > +++ b/diff.c > @@ -2826,6 +2826,15 @@ int diff_populate_filespec(struct diff_filespec *s, unsigned int flags) > s->data = strbuf_detach(&buf, &size); > s->size = size; > s->should_free = 1; > + } else { > + /* data must be NUL-terminated so e.g. for regexec() */ > + char *data = xmalloc(s->size + 1); > + memcpy(data, s->data, s->size); > + data[s->size] = '\0'; > + munmap(s->data, s->size); > + s->should_munmap = 0; > + s->data = data; > + s->should_free = 1; > } Without having done a complete audit recently, my gut and my recollection from previous discussions is that regexec() really is the culprit here for the diff code[1]. If we are going to do a workaround like this, I think we could limit it only to cases where know it matters, like --pickaxe-regex. Can it be triggered with -G? I thought that operated on the diff content itself, which would always be in a heap buffer (which should be NUL terminated, but if it isn't, that would be a separate fix from this). -Peff [1] We do make the assumption elsewhere that git objects are NUL-terminated, but that is enforced by the object-reading code (with the exception of streamed blobs, but those are obviously dealt with separately anyway).