🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm not an emacs user, but I recently helped someone track down a
problem. I hope this information helps you improve emacs.

We are running GnuEmacs 18.52.3. The problem occurs on a Sun3 running
SunOS 4.1.1 and on a Sun Sparcserver (400 something) running SunOS 4.0.3.

If there is an environment setting consisting solely of an equals-sign
character, ie the variable and its value are both empty strings, emacs
dies during initialization (before the screen is drawn) with an Illegal
Instruction message. The problem can be reproduced with the following
script:
    43 keenan@inmet> setenv ''
    44 keenan@inmet> emacs
    Illegal instruction
    45 keenan@inmet>

It appears that emacs places special interpretation on environment
variables that start with an equals-sign. Although I haven't looked
at the code, I assume that once it finds an equals-sign at the beginning
of an environment setting, it then looks for another to delimit the
value. Unfortunately, it never considered that the leading one could
be the only one.

Please take my interpretation with a grain of salt, but it does seem
consistant. We are in no rush for the fix, but do look forward to
seeing it in a forthcomming release. Thanks,

--keenan ross           keenan@inmet.inmet.com
 Intermetrics, Inc.     uunet!inmet!keenan
 733 Concord Ave.
 Cambridge, MA  02138   PHONE:    (617) 661-1840