[albatross-users] regexp bug in Python 2.4.0 causes Albatross core dumps

[Andrew McNamara]

We've identified a defect in Python 2.4.0's regular expression code
that causes grief for Albatross's template parsing. From the Python 2.4
release highlights:

    The re module was extended to allow simple conditional expressions
    in regular expressions. In addition, the underlying SRE engine is
    now non-recursive (previously, certain types of regular expression
    would run into troubles with recursion).

Unfortunately, the code that was added to support this fails to initialise
realloc()'ed memory prior to use, and with complex regular expressions in
use, the python interpreter dies with an invalid memory access soon after.

This has been reported as Python bug ID 1088891.

-- 
Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft
http://www.object-craft.com.au/