I'm away from my Mac at the moment, but FWIW, the crash does not appear to happen on Windows (MSYS64):

(0)> printf -v result " %5'd"

printf: %5': invalid directive

(1)> $0 --version

zsh 5.9 (x86_64-pc-msys)

On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:13 PM Philippe Altherr <philippe.altherr@gmail.com> wrote:

On macOS 14.5 running Zsh 5.9, the following command crashes Zsh:

% zsh -c "printf -v result \" %5'd\""

zsh:printf:1: %5': invalid directive

zsh(41890,0x7ff8450ddfc0) malloc: *** error for object 0x600002c811e0: pointer being realloc'd was not allocated

zsh(41890,0x7ff8450ddfc0) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

zsh: abort      zsh -c "printf -v result \" %5'd\""

Surprisingly, dropping the -v option, removing the space before the %, or adding an echo command after the printf command avoid the crash:

% zsh -c "printf \" %5'd\"" 

zsh:printf:1: %5': invalid directive

 %

% zsh -c "printf -v result \"%5'd\""

zsh:printf:1: %5': invalid directive

% zsh -c "printf -v result \" %5'd\"; echo foo"

zsh:printf:1: %5': invalid directive

foo

Philippe

--

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>