A 35-Year-Old Bug in Patch Found in Efforts to Restore 29 Year Old 2.11BSD
An Anonymous Coward writes:
A 35-year-old bug in patch found in efforts to restore 29 year old 2.11BSD:
Larry Wall posted patch 1.3 to mod.sources on May 8, 1985. A number of versions followed over the years. It's been a faithful alley [sic] for a long, long time. I've never had a problem with patch until I embarked on the 2.11BSD restoration project. In going over the logs very carefully, I've discovered a bug that bites this effort twice. It's quite interesting to use 27 year old patches to find this bug while restoring a 29 year old OS...
After some careful research, this turned out to be a fairly obscure bug in an odd edge case caused by "the state of email in the 1980s." which can be relegated to the dustbin of history...
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.