busybox sed not POSIX-conforming? (was: groff 1.25.0.rc2 on Alpine Linux)

"G. Branden Robinson via busybox" <[email protected]> Thu, 6 Aug 2026 21:30:33 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.busybox,gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260807023033.nl4wt67fgjnol2jw@illithid>

[looping in busybox mailing list; Bruno found a sed portability problem]

Background:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68601

Hi Bruno,

At 2026-08-06T18:07:55+0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> I wrote:
> > The reason is that the 'sed' program on this platform (from BusyBox)
> > ignores '-e' options when a '-f' option is present, regardless
> > whether the '-e' options come before or after the '-f' option.
> 
> Addendum: This is not the case in general, but is the case with this
> particular '-f' script and these particular '-e' options.

I didn't experiment to determine the issue, but the following change in
wording from POSIX Issue 4 to Issue 8 might account for the discrepancy.

Issue 4:

−f script_file		Add the editing commands in the file script_file
			to the end of the script.

Issue 8:

−f script_file		Add the editing commands in the file script_file
			to the end of the script of editing commands.

I wonder what alternative script the Busybox developers have in mind.

Regards,
Branden

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