1.77.2. RHBA-2011:0385: ksh bug fix update

An updated ksh package that fixes various bugs is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

KSH-93 is the most recent version of the KornShell by David Korn of AT&T Bell Laboratories. KornShell is a shell programming language which is also compatible with sh, the original Bourne Shell.

This update fixes the following bugs:

* The KornShell's "IFS" variable contains a list of field separators and is used to separate the results of command substitution, parameter expansion, or separate fields with the "read" built-in command. Previously, ksh did not protect this variable from being freed. Consequent to this, when a user attempted to unset the "IFS" variable from within a function, ksh terminated unexpectedly with a segmentation fault. With this update, an upstream patch has been applied to address this issue, and using the "unset IFS" command inside a function body no longer causes ksh to crash. (BZ#684829)

* When a ksh script created a file and immediately opened it after the creation, the operation failed. This happened because the created file, in some cases, did not exist yet. With this update, this race condition has been fixed and once a file is created, it is immediately available for any following commands. (BZ#684831)

* Prior to this update, ksh did not close a file containing an auto-loaded function definition. After loading several functions, ksh could have easily exceeded the system's limit on the number of open files. With this update, files containing auto-loaded functions are properly closed, thus, the number of opened files no longer increases with usage. (BZ#684832)

All users of ksh are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which resolves these issues.